Is Señor Trumpanzee Encouraging The Anti-LGBT Crackdown In Egypt?

Mashrou' Leila, a 5 piece alt-rock band from Beirut, is almost 10 years old. The sing about the some topics indie bands everywhere sing about-- like why stuff (like politics) sucks. But in their part of the world, those topics can mean trouble, especially now that they're hugely popular and draw gigantic crowds. Lead singer Hamed Sinno is openly gay-- which is dangerous in conservative Middle East societies. They were the first Middle East band ever featured on the cover of Rolling Stone but their controversial songs-- especially about tolerance of homosexuality-- have gotten them banned in Jordan. This is from their Facebook page:

We regret to inform you that the Mashrou’ Leila concert, which was supposed to take place on the 27th of June in Amman, has been cancelled following a decision by the Jordanian ministry of interior.

The decision was reminiscent of last year’s concert, when our performance was authorized, then banned, then the ban was lifted, all of which was surrounded by shameful coverage of Jordan in international press.

Again, after being invited to perform in Amman this year, and after the concert organizers obtained all the necessary licenses and permits, the Jordanian authorities have banned our performance.

We were genuinely under the impression that the Jordanian authorities were taking a clear stand with regards to freedom of expression, and the internationally sanctioned human rights pertaining to the LGBTIQ+ community, which the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Jordan’s former Permanent Representative to the United Nations, HRH Prince Zeid Bin Ra’ad Al Hussein has been supporting.

The inconsistency of the Jordanian authorities in this respect (inviting us, then banning, then cancelling the ban, then inviting us again, then banning us again-- all within the course of 14 months-- has culminated in a clear message, that the Jordanian authorities do not intend to separate Jordan from the fanatical conservatism that has contributed in making the region increasingly toxic over the last decade.

We are terribly disheartened and sorry for our audience that this is happening again. We were extremely excited to return and play our music to our audience, friends and families who live in Jordan, and have been our foremost advocates since the band’s conception. We are sorry for being forced to exclude Jordan from our tour in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, which will still go on as planned.

Since all of this directly echoes the events of last year, we will reiterate our own statement from a year ago:

"An in-depth reading of the band’s stances and our songs reveals our interest in various social struggles, questioning the nature of freedom, and addressing various issues that we cannot ostrich ourselves from, be they oppression, censorship, gun control, sexual repression, the patriarchal oppression of both men and women, or the difficulty of just being, when being is in a society that constantly extinguishes our aspirations…..Saying that the band must be banned from playing in Jordan because our songs address themes of sexuality, homosexuality or support righteous democratic protests against social or political problems, is essentially saying that any artist addressing basic human rights through their work should be banned. This is a rather hostile approach towards human rights and democratic processes.”

Furthermore, pretending that these oppressive decisions are necessary under the guise of protecting “Jordanian customs and traditions” frames said traditions in a horribly regressive light. This is a misrepresentation of the people of Jordan, who we know are progressive supporters of human rights, and who respect intellectual and cultural pluralism.

Again, “one has only to look at the reaction of the Jordanian people to the cancellation, to see that the notion of a singular, homogeneous society that shares these “customs, and traditions,” does not seem to apply to Jordanian people, much as it cannot apply to anyone and anywhere else. Most importantly, the vile and absurdly fallacious smear campaign led by the Jordanian media and somehow supported by certain members of the Jordanian government, continues to go un-reprimanded, as though publishing defamatory imputations in the media to score some sort of petty “victory” against free speech, were not “at odds with Jordanian customs and traditions.”

On a more personal note, over the last 3 years of playing in Europe and the Americas, we have repeatedly leveraged our position in the public eye to be particularly vocal about defending the Arab and Islamic community in the face of US and European aggression, misrepresentation, and stereotyping.

It is disheartening to see a few members of that community trying to pit that very same community against us. We will not stop defending the Islamic community on account of this. Nor will we stop defending the LGBTIQ community on account of this. Nor will we change anything about how we go about making and performing our music. We are not afraid of the various death threats we’ve received over the last few days. We refuse to be ashamed of supporting our queer band-mate. We are proud of our work. We are proud of our audience, as always. If anything, today we are ashamed of the decisions of the Jordanian authorities.

And a few days ago they were in the NY Times, but not with a review. Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Saeed el-Sisi's fascist government is doing badly and Egyptians are growing restive. Scapegoating gays in the ultra-conservative society is an effective way to get people to stop thinking about el-Sisi's short-comings as a national leader. Tuesday the Times reported that Mashrou' Leila's Cairo concert led to an anti-LGBT crackdown in which at least 34 people have been arrested on suspicion of being gay and waving rainbow flags.

The crackdown has been fueled by social media, where images of the flag-waving were widely shared, and by dating apps and other websites, which the Egyptian police have used to entrap people suspected of being gay and transgender, activists and officials say.

Photographs and video of Ahmed Alaa, a 22-year-old law student, and others waving the flag at the concert by Mashrou’ Leila, a Lebanese band with an openly gay singer, stoked public outrage and vituperative news coverage that described the flag-waving as an assault on Egypt and its morals.

Ahmed Moussa, an influential talk show host, suggested last week that Mr. Alaa and the others had been funded by unidentified enemies who wanted to “disgrace” Egypt by making it appear to accept homosexuality.

“I am warning you against calling this a matter of personal freedom!” he told viewers. “This is about religions! This is about morals!”

In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Alaa seemed unconcerned about the uproar. “Everything will be fine,” he said. “They just said that they arrested gays to calm down the public.”

The next day he was arrested and charged by national security prosecutors-- who usually investigate terrorism-- with membership in “an illegal group trying to promote homosexual ideas,” according to his lawyer, Ramadan Mohamed. His trial date has not been set.

The crackdown has primarily targeted gay men and transgender women, groups that the Egyptian state and mass media do not consider distinct from each other. Hundreds of them have been arrested since 2013 as part of a broad crackdown on social freedoms by the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, which has killed hundreds of protesters and jailed thousands of political opponents.

The latest wave of arrests has drawn a stream of criticism from rights groups and condemnation from Mashrou’ Leila, which said in a statement on Tuesday that Egypt was “hellbent on executing the most atrocious of human rights violations.”

“What is happening now is unprecedented,” said Gasser Abed El Razek, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which has been monitoring the crackdown and providing legal aid to defendants. “We think they are doing this to respond to the fuss that the Mashrou’ Leila concert created.”

At least one recent detainee has been convicted, according to state media, which did not identify the person. It said the detainee had been sentenced last week to six years in prison for “committing debauchery.”

Most of the 34 people arrested since the concert were ensnared through social media and dating apps, prosecutors said. Egyptian authorities have long used online entrapment to arrest gay people, including during a crackdown in 2001. Officers lure someone to a date, arrest them and then use the messages sent during their flirtation as evidence in court.

...Members of Mashrou’ Leila, who are currently artists in residence at New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, said through a spokeswoman, Hind Azennar, that they were “heartbroken that the band’s work has been used to scapegoat yet another crackdown by the government.”

“We denounce the demonization and prosecution of victimless acts between consenting adults,” the band said. “It is sickening to think that all this hysteria has been generated over a couple of kids raising a piece of cloth that stands for love.”

The band also called for the creation of an “internationalist solidarity movement” to pressure Mr. Sisi’s government “to immediately halt its ongoing witch hunt and release all detainees.”

The persecution of gay and transgender people began in earnest in the fall of 2013 when a military curfew imposed after the removal of former President Mohamed Morsi ended. That returned control of the streets to the police, who were eager to reassert the authority they had lost during the country’s 2011 revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

The final years of Mr. Mubarak’s government, the turbulent days of the 2011 revolution and Mr. Morsi’s brief tenure were a time of relative openness for gay and transgender Egyptians.

At the time, the police were more preoccupied with trying to crush dissent and then protecting themselves when Mr. Mubarak resigned. Little attention was paid to gay Egyptians, who had last been the target of a widespread crackdown in 2001. That repression gained international attention with the arrest of dozens of gay men on the Queen Boat nightclub.

Are you afraid I'm going to tell you there's a Trump connection? Your fears are well-founded... His regime has been sending signals, very disturbing and dangerous signals.



First the good news: the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the use of the death penalty as punishment for consensual gay relations. All the countries of Western Europe and Latin America (except Cuba, which abstained) voted for the resolution but the Trumpist Regime voted with several other barbaric fascist governments against it: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, China, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia...