2007-06-14

Then Congresswoman and now SENATOR TAMMY BALDWIN (D-WI) and now-retired Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) wrote a public letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging the State Department to investigate reports of violent persecution of homosexual Iraqis by Islamic groups and militias. According to Iraqi LGBT, a London-based human rights group working to support the human rights of Gay Iraqis, twenty-six of its members have been killed since 2003, including the murder of two minors — 11-year-old Ameer and 14-year-old Ahmed who were forced into child prostitution — in 2006. In addition, a mass kidnapping of five gay men from the Shaab area of Iraq took place during the first week of December 2006. All are now presumed dead.