http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=8472A growing number of Iraqi boys are joining the commercial sex trade -- some forced to do so by gangs, some out of poverty in a country where official government figures for youth unemployment at 48 % -- although the real figure is undoubtedly much higher --according to a report from the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs' Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN). One boy whose story was told in the report was "Hassan Feiraz, a 16-year-old boy, has started a desperate new life since being forced into the sex trade in Baghdad, joining a growing number of adolescents soliciting in Iraq under the threat of street gangs or the force of poverty.
"Every day I cry at night,” Feiraz said. “I’m a homosexual and was forced to work as a prostitute because one of the people I had sex with took pictures of me in bed and said that, if I didn't work for him, he was going to send the pictures to my family. My life is a disaster today. I could be killed by my family to restore their honour,” he said, explaining that homosexuality was totally unacceptable in Iraq due to religious beliefs.
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of youths engaged in the commercial sex trade since the fall of Saddam Hussein, according to this report, which attributes the Increase to "economic pressure faced by families countrywide and the presence of new prostitution rings that have sprung up since the invasion. With society in turmoil and a raft of other serious issues to address, child protection has not been uppermost in the priorities of the transitional government. The gangs use money or threats to get teenage boys to work for them, officials said."
"Many of us are working under threat, but others are there because they don’t know how to survive and found it as an easy way of getting money,” Feiraz said. “Someone should help free us from these criminals.”
So-called "honor killings" of gay youth are endorsed by many Iraqi religious leaders. "Sheikh Hussein Salah, one of the heads of the Shi’ite Muslim community in Iraq, told IRIN in Baghdad that the families of those boys engaged in homosexual practices should 'kill them', whether the situation was forced on them or they entered into it freely. During Saddam Hussein's regime, Salah said, homosexuality was illegal and homosexual practices were punishable by death. 'We hope that this will be applied under the new constitution,' he added.
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