EGYPTIAN GAYS SUFFER QUIETLY
CAIRO, Egypt,
July 19 (UPI) -- More than 50 gay men, arrested for participating in an activist
gathering, will appear before a state security court on Aug. 15.
Two
prisoners, Sherif Hassan Farahat, 30, and Mahmoud Ahmad Alam Dokla, 23, were
accused of "disdain of religion and practicing immoral acts." The 50 other
suspects were accused of "practicing immoral acts," based on the results of the
forensic exams.
All of the men pleaded innocent to the charges Wednesday
in a Cairo court. They were arrested on a Nile riverboat restaurant on May 11.
The court rejected their request for trial by an ordinary court.
"Police
barred their families and friends from the hearing," said GayEgypt.com, a
London-based Web site for Egyptian gays.
On Aug. 15 the defense lawyers
will begin their arguments.
"The relatives of the defendants became
furious when they saw photographers and some of them attacked them. Most of the
accused covered their faces with towels or plastic bags to avoid being
photographed," the report said.
"Spectators called the prisoners
perverts, as the police van drove them away. The brother of one of the prisoners
had a fight with a spectator who called his brother a faggot."
Amnesty
International and other human rights groups have condemned the trial as 'inhuman
and unfair.' But the defendants and their relatives appeared more concerned
about the social consequences of being branded as gays in Egypt's deeply
religious society than the trial itself.
Prosecutor General Maher Abdel
Wahid has already indicated that the trial may go on for months, exposing the
defendants to media and public at each hearing.
"This case exhibits some
of the worst features of Egypt's justice system -- prolonged and incommunicado
detention and emergency proceedings on spurious charges," says Hanny Megally,
director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights
Watch.
"But the society has already declared them guilty even before the
verdict," said an Egyptian gay activist. "Neighbors shout insults at their
relatives as they go out to shop and some have had insulting graffiti written on
their walls," he said. "Police also ridicule them for bringing disgrace to
men."
The friends and relatives of the prisoners say that they are not
allowed regular access to the defendants and that some of them are beaten and
mistreated.
"He has been whipped, electrified and threatened by dogs,"
said the roommate of one of the men imprisoned. He said his friend showed "the
scars to the prosecutors but they refused to send him to a doctor," says a
report in the Cairo Times.
The trial has scared other gays who were
already afraid of declaring their sexual inclination in a conservative society
like Egypt's. "All the Internet mailing lists and Web sites for Egyptian gay men
have been closed, not by police but by the victims themselves," said one gay
activist.
The only site still up is the London-based GayEgypt.com, which
is out of reach of the Egyptian courts. But the Egyptian police monitor this
site as well. "Egyptian state security police may be monitoring you! Try to
avoid always logging on from the same location," says a warning on the top of
the site's front page.
"Following charges against 52 men arrested at a
gay night at a Cairo disco and continuing widespread torture and intimidation by
police, we reluctantly advise all tourists against visiting Egypt," says another
warning.--
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.