Nour never felt completely safe as a queer in Lebanon. But in recent years, the 25-year-old pharmacist has begun to slacken his vigilance, meeting friends in Beirut LGBTQ-friendly spaces and even performing in drag shows.
He is now choosing to stay home, fearing for his safety more than ever after a wave of anti-LGBTQ hate speech that followed last month’s decision by the Lebanese Interior Ministry to suspend all events promoting sexual perversion. to stop.
The setback is part of a broader approach to marginalized groups and freedoms that activists say is designed to distract the public from Lebanon’s spiraling economic and financial crisis, which has driven three-quarters of the population into poverty.
Millions in the once middle-income country continue to struggle with rising inflation, rampant power cuts and drug shortages, while tens of thousands have left the country in search of opportunities abroad.
It really felt like they just wanted to distract the masses from everything that was going on and focus on this hot topic, Nour, who asked to use a pseudonym for not coming to family, told The Associated Press.
Since then, security forces have cracked down on several events targeting the LGBTQ community, forcing their organizers to eventually shut them down. They also visited the offices of Helem, the country’s first registered LGBTQ advocacy group, and asked for their registration papers and other documents.
The move followed loud complaints from religious officials who publicly described them as godless and said they were not in line with Lebanese customs.
In a statement on June 24, the Interior Ministry said LGBTQ-friendly events violate the customs and traditions of our society and contradict the principles of the Abrahamic religions.
Helems director Tarek Zeidan rejected the statement and said Lebanese are competing against each other.
It was very clear that it was a conscious decision to create moral panic in order to divert attention from the general political and economic disaster that Lebanon is today, Zeidan said.
Lebanon has been reeling since late 2019 from a crippling economic crisis that the World Bank says is among the worst in the world since the mid-19th century. The Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value against the dollar, while much of the population has struggled to cope with rising diesel, gasoline, medicine and food prices.
Citizens and experts blame decades of financial mismanagement and corruption by the Lebanese ruling elite for the crisis.
Human rights groups say the recent setback for the LGBTQ community is part of a broader approach to civil rights and freedoms, coupled with the economic crisis.
In May, religious clerics rioted after recently elected lawmakers and advocacy groups promoted civil marriage and state-imposed personal status laws independent of religious courts.
Last month, comedian and rights activist Shaden Fakih stood before the Military Court accused of damaging the reputation and insulting the country’s internal security forces in a prank amid the country’s COVID-19 lockdown, asking permission to to leave home in order to buy sanitary pads.
And earlier this month, the Lebanese government announced it is in talks with Syria about a forced return plan for more than a million Syrians in the country.
Some activists and human rights defenders say the Lebanese authorities are trying to find scapegoats as they block investigations linked to a large number of financial crimes, the explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 and rising cases of domestic violence and sexual assault.
The state either seems completely unwilling or unable to crack down on violations of serious rights such as corruption, torture and hate speech, but on the other hand, it acts very quickly under pressure from religious and other powerful institutions in the country to protect the rights. from marginalized groups, Aya Majzoub, a Lebanon researcher with Human Rights Watch, told the AP.
In some cases, residents have responded to religious leaders by taking matters into their own hands.
In the predominantly Christian Achrafieh district, partisans the Soldiers of God, a protest group advocating for socially conservative values and laws, put down a billboard to promote Pride Month events. Elsewhere, residents of the Sunni Tarik Jdideh neighborhood gathered to condemn the LGBTQ community events and their supporters, calling them an infiltration into their community.
Reverend Abdo Abou Kassm, director of the Catholic Center for Information, a media branch of the Maronite Church, sympathized with the angry protesters, although he opposes any violence and bullying.
You have your freedom at home, but you cannot promote it in the community because it is basically against nature. The law says it does and almost all Lebanese adhere to it, Abou Kassm said, adding that the angry protests were a response. “Our society is not ready for this.
Despite a constant fight against discrimination and abuse, the Lebanese LGBTQ community is the most vibrant and open in the Arab world and has made significant progress in recent years. While homosexuality is still considered a crime, the country has at least half a dozen active LGBTQ advocacy groups, as well as bars and clubs that openly cater to the community.
Now Nour and his friends avoid each other in their usual spots, fearing raids and intimidation.
We have a WhatsApp group, so when someone goes out, we let the others know and when we expect to be back home, he explained.
As Lebanon’s troubled economy continues to disrupt, activists fear authorities will continue to target marginalized groups to distract from real-world problems.
We are witnessing the beginning of a full-scale attack as this ruling regime is beginning to fear losing control, Zeidan said. What we say loud and clear is that they are coming for all of us. First they came for the refugees, and nobody cared. Then they came for the gays and nobody cared.
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