Even at my most frustrated...
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Even when I'm furious at the injustices and stupidity for which our government is sometimes responsible, I'm glad to live in a nation that, while not anywhere near we need to be on issues of sexuality and sexual orientation, at least we don't have to deal with this kind of insanity:
By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 9, 4:37 PM ET
CAIRO, Egypt - An Egyptian court convicted five men Wednesday on charges of homosexual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials said.
Defense lawyer, Adel Ramadan, said the judge found the men guilty of the "habitual practice of debauchery" — a term used in the Egyptian legal system to denote consensual homosexual acts.
The convictions were confirmed by a judicial official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists.
Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery are applied to homosexuals in this conservative country.
The five men were arrested in what human rights groups describe as a crackdown on people with the AIDS virus, using the debauchery charges as a means to prosecute them.
Four of the five men tested HIV-positive after all were forced to undergo blood tests in custody, Human Rights Watch says. The New York-based rights group issued a statement Tuesday signed by more than 100 other organizations around the world condemning the prosecutions.
Ramadan, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the five men were abused and tortured over the past several months to "extract confessions" from them.
In addition to their prison time, the men were sentenced to an additional three years of police supervision, meaning they will have to spend every night at a police station, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the lawyer said.
Ramadan said the four HIV-positive defendants were shocked by their convictions.
"Two of them cried, screamed and shrieked," he said. "The other two, they remained silent, but I saw anger in their eyes for the injustice they have been exposed to."
Ramadan said he appealed the verdict to Egypt's Court of Cassation, the country's highest appellate court.
Dozens of human rights groups have criticized this trial and other similar ones as being driven by ignorance and fear of AIDS. They have warned that the convictions could undermine AIDS prevention in Egypt.
The five convicted Wednesday were among 12 people arrested in a sweep that began in October, when police arrested a man during an altercation with another man on a Cairo street, Human Rights Watch said.
After one of the men said he was HIV-positive, authorities opened investigations into other men whose names or contact information were uncovered in interrogations of the first group of men, Human Rights Watch said.
Egyptian police have denied making any arrests because of a person's HIV condition.
In mid-January, four other HIV-positive men from the group of 12 were sentenced to one-year prison terms on similar charges of debauchery. Three others from the 12 were not prosecuted, Human Rights Watch said.
Currently in Memphis, Tennessee
Currently listening to Angels & Airwaves
posted by Dustin @ 8:40 AM,
2 Comments:
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At April 11, 2008 at 1:52 AM,
Reverend Humpy said...
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The oh-so-sad fact is... This is tame for fundamentalist Islamic church-states. You're talking about a people who are used to finding the solution to any manner of disagreements on the business end of a dynamite vest. I mean, for a region that sees no problem with cutting off the hands of convicted theives, three years in jail and three more of police supervision is kind of a slap on the wrist (forgive the pun).
Don't get me wrong, I am not generalizing about all Muslims, just the ones in charge of these barbaric laws. Also, it's probably about time I start attacking the other Abrahamic religions and give Christianity a rest for a moment.
I think it all boils down to this: If you think you've got God figured out, you're wrong. If you think you can come in use holiness as a badge to hide behind while you dictate the private lives of other human beings, you're wrong.
The scariest part of all of it for me is that THIS country, the one that STARTED the whole modern "separation of church and state" bit, still buys into the fundamentalist bullshit hook, line, and sinker. For example, I had to fight of a round of convulsive vommiting this evening when I saw the contestants on American Idol, the country's #1 rated show, singing "Shout to the Lord" for the show's openning number. What the fuck? The next time I hear an American Christian talk about being "persecuted" by the secular world, I'm going to punch him square in the nose...so he won't go to Hell for being a liar.
Whew, that was kind of long. Sorry. You know how I get.
Anyway, keep up the good fight - my brother.
The Reverend. -
At April 11, 2008 at 5:35 AM,
Dustin said...
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I just about had an aneurism. Oy veh.