Iraq Criminalizes Queer Relationships With Maximum 15 Years in Prison

Iraq ’s parliament continued to criminalize queer people on Saturday by passing a bill that makes same-sex relations punishable by up to 15 years in prison, furthering its extreme anti-LGBTQ+ legislation of recent years. The bill, which targets queer relationships on the basis of clamping down on “moral depravity,” also criminalizes transgender people and the health workers who care for them. It threatens to imprison for one to three years anyone who seeks “biological sex change based on personal desire and inclination” as well as the doctors who perform their surgeries. The bill has drawn explicit condemnation from human rights groups, who have warned for years about Iraq’s policies targeting LGBTQ+ people. “Iraq has effectively codified in law the discrimination and violence members of the LGBTI community have been subjected to with absolute impunity for years,” Amnesty International’s Iraq researcher, Razaw Salihy, told The Guardian . “The amendments concerning LGBTI rights are a violation of fundamental human rights and put at risk Iraqis whose lives are already hounded daily.”

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