“To my brothers, I tried to survive but failed.
To my friends, the experience was hard and I was too weak to fight.
To the world, you were very cruel, but I forgive you”
How much pain can a 30-year-old girl endure?
Three days ago, Sarah Hijazi, refugee in Canada and victim of the horror of the most blind homophobia, committed suicide, after two years of struggle. After a lifetime of struggle.
Being homosexual in a country like Egypt is not an easy thing to do and too many pay the consequences of a society that is still so homophobic and transphobic.
It is October 2017 when a Lebanese band, the Mashrou Leila, one of the most famous in the Middle East also for its members' commitment to the LGBTQ+ community. On this eagerly awaited occasion, Sarah, together with her friends, raises a rainbow flag in the middle of the crowd. This action cost her arrest, as well as 27 other people accused of being homosexual and inciting homosexuality, while the Mashrou Leila are banned from the country.
The band itself, on tour in the US, denounced in a post what was going on: “We can't even begin to explain how sad we are to see a new era of tyranny being unleashed in one of the nations we love most and on one of our favourite audiences. These raids are in no way separable from the suffocating atmosphere of fear and abuse that Egyptians breathe every day, regardless of their sexual inclinations. We denounce the demonisation and persecution of acts between consenting adults: it hurts to think that all this hysteria was generated by a couple of kids waving a piece of cloth that is a symbol of love”.
Released on bail, also following international pressure, Sarah recounted the violence and abuse she and her companions suffered during her two months in prison. Torture, physical and psychological violence, the ever-hard hand of the Egyptian jailers was particularly hard on LGBTQ+ activists. Even after her release, she is publicly denounced for her sexual orientation, so much so that she is forced to leave Egypt and take refuge in Canada, where she obtains international protection. There, Sarah continues her fight for human rights and the demand for the release of the still imprisoned activists. However, the violence she suffered has never left her. She conveyed them on a note she left to her friends, witnessing her pain.
In Egypt, homosexuality is not officially considered a crime, but is in fact prosecuted as “perversion”. People deemed homosexual are often arrested on charges of prostitution or drug possession - all pretexts for institutional intolerance. Although there is turmoil within Egypt's LGBTQ+ movements, and part of the cultural elite is gay friendly, In recent years, there has been a further clampdown by the authorities against the gay and lesbian community.
Human Rights Watch[1], In a recent communiqué, it called on the European Union to take concrete measures in response to the human rights crisis in the country, denouncing the agreement between Italy and Egypt on the sale of arms. The same agreement concluded while public opinion is still wondering about the fate of Patrick Zaky, the Bologna University student still detained in Tora prison in Cairo on charges of spreading subversive messages.
Patrick, who was majoring in gender studies, he was working with an NGO, and, as emerged from an article in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar Elyom, was probably conducting studies on gay rights and government repression. A line, that chosen by the Egyptian media, aimed at endorsing the accusations that the boy was a disseminator of perversion and chaos.
Last November, Amnesty published a short report on homosexuality in Africa[2]. The study shows that in most African countries, being homosexual is regarded as shameful, a problem. In Mauritania, Sudan, northern Nigeria and Somalia, it can even cost lives.
And even where there is no specific criminalisation, there is also no protection, which does not prevent the occurrence of even serious incidents of discrimination and social stigma.
A reality that seems light years away from ours. Yet, if we cross the Mediterranean, we still find ourselves fighting for the amendment of articles 604-bis and 604-ter of the penal code on propaganda and incitement to commit racial, ethnic or religious discrimination, for the addition of the words “or based on sexual orientation or gender identity”. These, the ten words that made the skin crawl for the ultra-Catholics whose only and hammering argument is that this law is detrimental to freedom of opinion. In Italy, homophobia is rampant. According to the Hate Crimes No More project[3] of the Lgbti Resource Centre, 73% of people from the LGBTQ+ community have experienced homotransfobic violence and 76.4% have not reported the incident out of fear. We cannot therefore speak of isolated cases.
As with gender-based violence, homophobic violence is also a reality perpetrated by society itself. A society that still claims to “cure” so-called “sexual deviance”, that does not consider trans women to be women in their own right, in which the only possible one is the traditional family, based on heteronormative characteristics, and that cries gender theory.
These, according to the Italian Bishops“ Conference, would be legitimate forms of freedom of opinion, to be protected and not ”censored“ through a law, stating that ”any introduction of further incriminating norms would risk opening up to liberticidal drifts, whereby - rather than sanctioning discrimination - one would end up striking the expression of a legitimate opinion“. Already in 2013, when Ivan Scalfarotto of the PD (now Italia Viva) proposed his bill on homophobia - which was then wrecked in the Senate - in order to please the Church, an amendment signed by Gregorio Gitti (also of the PD) was approved, according to which ”the free expression and manifestation of convictions or opinions referable to the pluralism of ideas do not constitute discrimination or incitement to discrimination“. The amendment, nicknamed the ”bailout', effectively thwarted the efforts of the law, opening a regulatory vacuum that is still waiting to be filled. And little does it matter if you are beaten up on the street because you are gay, according to the Italian Episcopal Conference and its daily newspaper L'Avvenire, even regarded by many as a progressive newspaper, the Mancino law is sufficient to condemn discrimination. Obviously, it is not considered that a lack of a law on homotransfobia does not allow the aggravating circumstance to be recognised in sentences of assault.
A specific law that protects people from hatred and allows them to freely live out their sexual orientation and gender identity is increasingly necessary in a country where there are around 200 assaults a year, where until recently even the Prime Minister publicly claimed that “better pretty girls than being gay” and where even today the ghost of gender theory still hovers, considered dangerous for the growth of children. In a country in desperate need of secularism.
Precisely because we are still here fighting for what should be recognised rights for all, without distinction of any kind, and precisely in a month of the Pride somewhat peculiar, in which the ongoing health emergency prevented us from occupying the squares, it is even more important to bring to light the stories of Sarah, Patrick and all the activists whose names we do not know, but who fight at the cost of their lives for the rights of all of us.
No more exclusions.
