The veteran LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has been arrested after staging the first ever protest against homophobic oppression in Qatar, just weeks before the start of the World Cup, his team have claimed. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Following months of preparation to bypass the Gulf state’s strict security measures, Tatchell sprang up outside the National Museum in Doha, the capital, on Tuesday holding aloft a white sign reading, “Qatar arrests, jails and subjects LGBTs to ‘conversion’”.
Minutes into the one-man rally, a Qatari police officer approached Tatchell, questioned him, folded the sign up, and handed it back to him, before going to speak to another officer. At around 11.40am Qatar time, Tatchell texted his team in London with one word: “arrested”. It is expected that he will be deported but the video footage released by the Peter Tatchell Foundation cut off before any further developments could be captured.
In a pre-recorded interview, Tatchell said he wanted “to shine a light on Qatar’s human rights abuses against LGBT+ people – and also against women, migrant workers and liberal Qataris. I am supporting brave Qatari people battling their dictatorship.”
Homosexuality for both men and women is illegal in the country and punishable by three years imprisonment and, under sharia law, lashings. In the months leading up to the World Cup, media attention has turned to the treatment LGBT football fans might receive when attending matches. But for Tatchell the problems are much more far-reaching.
“LGBT+ Qataris face harassment on the street, ‘honour’ killing by homophobic families, online entrapment by the police, arrest, three years jail and potentially the death penalty,” he said. “Qatar has secret gay conversion centres where LGBTs can be detained and subjected to abusive attempts to turn them straight. These include conversion practices that involve a form of psychological and religious brainwashing. Some LGBTs sent there have suffered mental breakdowns and others have attempted or committed suicide.”
Tatchell, who has previously been beaten by Russian police and by the dictator Robert Mugabe’s bodyguards, said before the protest, “I was very fearful that I could be beaten, jailed, tortured or framed on sex or drug charges. Qatar’s interrogation centres and prisons are notorious for abuses. But my passion to defend human rights in Qatar overrode those fears.”
The controversial decision in 2010 to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar has prompted many to see the event as an opportunity to highlight human rights abuses against women, workers, migrants and LGBT people. But others have accused FIFA of allowing Qatar to use it for their own ends — to hide such problems under the glean of a major sporting event.
“Qatar cannot be allowed to sports wash its reputation,” said Tatchell. “We must ensure that the tyrant regime in Doha does not score a PR victory. It’s aim is to use the World Cup to deflect criticism and enhance its international image. We must not let them get away with that.”
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