Gay Congressman Jared Polis Demands Investigation of Murder of Iraqi Gays

I have written before about the travesty occurring in Iraq where gays - and those suspected of being gay - are being rounded up and executed with apparently no action from the puppet government to stop the murders. And without a word of protest from the Obama administration I might add which seemingly has turned a blind eye to the problem (one of my many disappointments with Obama regarding LGBT issues). Now Congressman Jared Polis who is in Baghdad has demanded that the U.S Embassy in Baghdad get off its ass and investigate the matter. Prior to his trip, an Iraqi human-rights advocacy group contacted Polis and forwarded him a letter written in jail by a man who said he was beaten into confessing he was a member of the gay-rights group Iraqi-LGBT. The group said the man had been sentenced to death in a court in Karkh, Iraq and executed. (The group and the author's names are omitted for their protection.) Polis also spoke through a translator by phone to a transgender Iraqi man who said he had been arrested, beaten, and raped by Ministry of Interior security forces.

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I applaud Polis' efforts but even better yet, someone from the White House needs to tell the Iraqi government that strings come attached to the billions of dollars being poured into that country - including an end to human rights abuses against gays. As Polis' letter points out, he was most disturbed by the State Department's unwillingness to take information concerning the flagrant murder of gays from human rights groups seriously. The text of Polis' letter can be found here. The following are some highlights:

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The United States should not tolerate human rights violations of any kind, especially by a government that Americans spend billions of taxpayer dollars each year supporting. Hopefully my trip and letters to US and Iraqi officials will help bring international attention and investigation to this terrible situation and bring an end to any such offenses.

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"We will now wait and see whether the Iraqi government is serious about protecting the human rights of all Iraqis and what role our own State Department has to play in helping to protect this minority in Iraq," said Polis. "I am most disturbed by allegations that the Iraqi government itself may be involved in the persecutions. This warrants an immediate investigation from both American and Iraqi governments."

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Sadly, the Obama administration's indifference to these murders is symptomatic of the fact that all across the USA - certainly here in Virginia - gay lives carry less value than those of straights and gays are routinely abused by the government's policies and in the courts and the legal system where obtaining equal justice is often impossible.