‘All this terror because of a photo: digital targeting and its offline consequences for LGBT people in the Middle East and North Africa’, is the title of the latest Human Rights Watch report on the violation of Human Rights in the LGBT community. One in which the organization reveals that government officials in said regions are using the social media activity of these people to profile and persecute them.
Hanan, a young transgender woman, was 17 years old when she was arbitrarily arrested by Egyptian security forces at a restaurant in the country’s capital, Cairo.
“I had been talking to a man on ‘Facebook’ and he asked to see me. We met in a restaurant”, recounts Hanan five years after the events for ‘Human Rights Watch’.
“I arrived to find four men in civilian clothes waiting for me. I knew that she was being arrested, ”she says.
The men were policemen. They took her phone, forced her to unlock it and log into the dating app ‘Grindr’ and even upload her private photos to social media. They had one goal: to create evidence to frame her.
Afterwards, they took her to the police station and made her undress.
“Officers slapped me and stabbed me with their pens to force me to speak. They threatened me with a forced anal examination. I told them to go ahead, I had nothing to hide. Then they ordered a forensic doctor to submit me to the anal examination, ”he narrates.
Hanan’s is just one of the cases included in a report by ‘Human Rights Watch’ (HRW) that reveals that the security forces of multiple countries in the Middle East and North Africa have used them to extort, harass and violate the right of privacy to people from the LGTBIQ+ community.
His case is part of one of the modalities found by the organization: that of “arbitrary arrests, illegal telephone searches, violations of due process.”
The report
Human Rights Watch interviewed 90 LGBT people affected by digital targeting and 30 experts, including lawyers and digital rights professionals for its report ‘All This Terror Because of One Photo: Digital Targeting and Its Offline Consequences for LGBT People in the Middle East and North Africa‘.
It focuses on five countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. Some places where social networks have led to channels to violate the human rights of these people, such as arbitrary arrests, rape and torture.
According to HRW, the report tracked how “authorities in the five countries manually monitor social media, create fake profiles to impersonate LGBT people and trap them on dating apps like Grindr and social media platforms like Facebook.”
“I spent 3 or 4 months away from my house in fear of online threats and the real ones in the streets and where I lived.”
Digital targeting by security forces has had far-reaching offline consequences for LGBT people.
Read the full report, out now: https://t.co/V3BMgUYHXj pic.twitter.com/2Rx3XemXhr
—Human Rights Watch (@hrw) February 21, 2023
In addition, how electronic devices have been used to collect private information to prosecute people in the group.
“Authorities in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia have integrated technology into their surveillance of LGBT people,” says Rasha Younes, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
He adds: “While digital platforms have allowed LGBT people to express themselves and amplify their voices, they have also become tools for state-sponsored repression.”
the arrests
Hanan’s story is among 20 cases of imprisonment following online monitoring by security forces on Grindr and Facebook in Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. Countries that, according to HRW, “do not explicitly criminalize same-sex relationships.”
Ayman, a 23-year-old gay man, had a similar experience to Hanan’s. “I was chatting with a man on ‘Grindr,’” he recounts. “We agreed to meet at the cafe, but instead of the man, five policemen in civilian clothes were waiting for me.”
The officers also asked him to unlock his phone to go through his files and apps.
They found private photos of me with long hair and other photos with a man and turned it into a case of wantonness and indecency, he says.
In this category there were different consequences while people were detained such as “arbitrary arrests, sexual assault and other forms of ill-treatment, including torture”.
Many of those interviewed were forced to sign confessions under duress and were denied due process.
The organization reports that on multiple occasions in the places where they were detained “they were denied food and water, they were denied family visits, they were not allowed to take medicine, they were verbally harassed, sexually assaulted, and physically abused.” “in other ways.
In addition to methods that HRW shows were discriminatory against transgender women who “were detained in men’s cells.”
The extortion
Hassan, a young bisexual, was extorted by a man he met at Grinder. He met him when he was 27 years old in his country, Lebanon.
“‘He was very kind and warm,'” he told HRW. On their third date, the man recorded him while they were having sex without his consent. The next day, he asked him for $1,000, threatening to post the video online and report it. to the authorities if he did not pay”.
Hassan’s was not an isolated case. HRW documented 17 extortions stemming from dating apps and social networks like Instagram and Facebook in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.
“In six cases, the targets of the extortion reported the perpetrators to the authorities, but were subsequently detained,” the report states.
In each country the crime was carried out by different actors. For example, in Iraq interviewees belonging to the LGBT community assured that the threats were perpetrated by “individuals and armed groups.” While in Jordan, the organization recorded a case where the “extortionists claimed to be intelligence agents.”
Interrogations and detentions of extortion victims
After the extortion, for many of the interviewees the problems in their countries of origin did not end.
According to HRW, six of the victims were “interrogated and detained after the extortionist reported them on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity or after the victim reported the extortion to authorities and was detained in place of the perpetrator.” .
“I thought I was turning to the law to protect myself, but they were manipulating me…. It’s impossible for me to turn to the state now for anything because I don’t trust them… after what happened to me,” says Yamen, a 25-year-old gay man who was extorted in Jordan.
One of the six cases ended in a six-month prison sentence for the alleged crime of “promoting prostitution online”.
Online bullying and death threats
“Hello fagot. We know where you work and where you live. We will fuck you and kill you ”, read one of the seven messages with threats of assault and death that Laith, a 27-year-old Iraqi man, and his boyfriend received in February 2020. All of these came on Grindr from two different accounts.
“I didn’t think anything would happen because everyone gets threats online and most of the time nothing happens. After receiving these threats, my boyfriend said that he felt like someone was following him. A couple of months later (in May of 2020), they killed him,” he says.
Since then Laith lives in fear of being the next victim, so he moved to another city, changed his number and deleted all his social media accounts.
According to HRW, these types of threats, while present in all the countries studied, “were particularly common and had especially dire consequences offline in Iraq.” The organization reported 32 cases of online death threats in that country.
Other types of online harassment are added to death threats, including modalities such as ‘outing’ (the act of revealing the sexual orientation or gender identity of a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender person without that person’s consent). and ‘doxing’ (posting personally identifiable information about a person without their consent).
HRW reported 26 cases of online harassment in Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia.
These types of acts had all kinds of consequences for their victims, such as the loss of their jobs, family violence, physical abuse, among others.
Digital “evidence” in arrests and prosecutions
“At the Metn police station, they searched our phones (forcing us to unlock them using physical force), including our chats and photo gallery. (The officers) forced me to respond to everyone who texted me and ask them for money in exchange for sex. I had never engaged in sex work, but they used these chats as evidence against me. (My friend and I) were detained for 2 months and 20 days in a men’s cell,” says Maria, a transgender woman of Lebanese nationality.
Like Maria’s, 45 cases of arbitrary arrest involving 40 LGBT people were documented in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia.
“In all 45 cases, we spoke to the victims and all said the officers had searched their phones, mostly using force or under threat of violence,” the report states.
“Security forces also used this information to justify abuses against him based on his real or assumed sexual orientation or gender identity,” the report concludes.
Responsibilities of countries and platforms
After having collected and analyzed the testimonies, HRW makes a series of recommendations to countries, recalling that “they have obligations under international and regional human rights law to address the violations described in this report.”
Some commitments that, according to the organization, have not been fulfilled on multiple occasions. “Authorities in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia have violated multiple fundamental rights of LGBT people, including their rights to non-discrimination, freedom of expression (including online), privacy, freedom from torture and others. mistreatment, and equal protection before the law.”
These abuses occur, in part, due to “the lack of protection by laws or sufficient regulations for digital platforms” that has generated enormous impunity.
As for the platforms, HRW says that “they should invest in content moderation, particularly in Arabic, quickly removing abusive content and content that could put users at risk.”
At the same time they must “identify, prevent, stop, mitigate, remedy and account for the potential and actual adverse impacts of digital targeting on human rights,” the report states.
#Social #networks #space #persecution #LGBT #people #Middle #East #Africa