Murder of LGBT people in Iraq | EU Asylum protection of LGBT people

This piece of news brings the shocking developments in Iraq horribly close to me: death squads in Iraq target homosexual and transsexual people, as the Gay City News reports.

At least four gay people have been murdered in the last week alone, as the group "Abu Nawas", an Iraqi gay refugee group based in London reports. The Badr corps, the military arm of the Supreme Council of the Islamist Revolution in Iraq is the primary group targeting and executing people for their sexual orientation.

The leader of the Supreme Council, the Shiite Ayatollah Sistani has issued a fatwah demanding the killing of homosexual people in late 2005.

EU Asylum for LGBT people
An EU directive (2004/83/EC) that includes persecution of homosexuality as a reason for asylum (though indirectly) will enter into force in October 2006. From then on, every EU country will have to provide the possibility to request asylum for LGBT people.

Various countries, one of them Austria, already provide the possibility of granting asylum for LGBT people. Despite this, effective protection of LGBT people is often lacking, as the example of Austria shows: to my knowledge less than 10 people have successfully requested asylum under this provision in recent years. A main reason is that the risk of persecution for sexual orientation or gender identification is often a general threat. Asylum procedures, on the other hand, want the asylum seeker to prove and document a personal or individual threat. (See guideline of ILGA-Europe)

The focus for future work, therefor, will lie on loosening the burden of proof, especially if the asylum seekers are from countries where the danger for LGBT people is as obvious as in Iraq.