Islamic State claims 30 killed for sodomy, UN meeting told

August 24, 2015 22:32

The Islamic State extremist group has claimed responsibility for executing at least 30 people for sodomy, the head of an international gay rights organisation said today at the first-ever UN Security Council meeting spotlighting what organisers called the "barbaric treatment."

"It's about time, 70 years after the creation of the UN, that the fate of LGBT persons who fear for their lives around the world is taking center stage," said US Ambassador Samantha Power, who organised the meeting on violence and discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people with Chile's UN envoy.

Jessica Stern, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, told the council that courts established by the militant group in Iraq and Syria claim to have punished sodomy with stoning, firing squads and beheadings and by pushing men from tall buildings.

Fear of the Islamic State group has fueled violence by other militias and "private actors" against LGBT individuals, she told the closed-door meeting.

Stern, whose remarks were released publicly, stressed that persecution of LGBT people in Iraq and Syria began long before the emergence of Islamic State militants, and "murder is only the most extreme form of violence."

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