In an article at Pink News, Maggie Baska tells the story of a gay Qatari man who helped to voice the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in his country and how he is determined to continue his activism.
Maggie Baska – Pink News
This is an excerpt from the article. To access the original article, click here.
“Dr Nas Mohamed made headlines in May when he became the first known Qatari to come out on a public platform.
Homosexuality is illegal in the Gulf state. Same-sex relationships are criminalised and carry a punishment of several years in jail or fines. In some cases, under Qatar’s Sharia law, queer people can face death for living as their authentic self.
Since then, Mohamed (who currently lives in San Francisco, California) has used his platform to speak out against the criminalisation of queer people in Qatar and calls on celebrities to champion LGBTQ+ rights ahead of the World Cup, which begins on 20 November.
He’s also worked with Human Rights Watch (HRW), helping them to compile a damning report on how Qatar has arrested, abused and harassed LGBTQ+ people as recently as September 2022. HRW documented beatings and sexual assault by police, and heard from trans women who said they were ordered to attend conversion therapy by officials.
Mohamed says there is “clear lack of transparency and visibility to the true extent” of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution in Qatar.
“I think there’s some real opportunity here to bring visibility and extend help to people like us,” he says. “This event [the World Cup] was going to really bury us this year in the shadows and that was going to be really dangerous.
“I feel like we’re going to be at least seen and that we are going to have a platform with our own voice, with actual evidence-based reporting so that there isn’t this massive confusion that we’re seeing everywhere right now about what’s going on. We just need an accurate voice.”
To continue reading, click here.