Gays face hormone treatment

2005-11-26 21:29

Jim Krane

Dubai - More than two dozen gay Arab men - arrested at what police called a mass homosexual wedding - could face government-ordered hormone treatments, five years in jail and a lashing, authorities said on Saturday.

The Interior Ministry said police raided a hotel chalet earlier this month and arrested 22 men from the Emirates as they celebrated the mass wedding ceremony - one of a string of recent group arrests of homosexuals here.

The men are likely to be tried under Muslim law on charges related to adultery and prostitution, said Interior Ministry spokesperson Issam Azouri.

Outward homosexual behaviour is banned in the United Arab Emirates and the gay group wedding has alarmed leaders of this once-isolated Muslim country as it grapples with a sweeping influx of western residents and culture.

The Arabian peninsula, nevertheless, has a long tradition of openly homosexual wedding singers and dancers.

"Lately people have been talking about (homosexuality), but it has been here for a long time," said Nadia Buhannad, a Dubai psychologist. "It becomes shocking only when it is your own son."

Police acting on a tip raided a hotel in Ghantout, a desert region on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway, and found a dozen men dressed as female brides and a dozen others in male Arab dress, apparently preparing for a ceremony that would join them as husbands and wives, Azouri said.

Parents should be vigilant for 'deviant' behaviour

The 26 men arrested include those from the Emirates as well as an Indian disc jockey and three men from neighboring Arab states.

Azouri said some of the group told police they worked as prostitutes. Others had been arrested before.

Last year, police made mass arrests at an apparent gay wedding in the conservative emirate of Sharjah and at the Khor Fakkan beach resort in Fujairah emirate, a police official said.

Two dozen men arrested in Sharjah were given symbolic lashings - meant to humiliate, not inflict pain - and then released from jail, said prominent Emirati lawyer Abdul Hamid al-Kumaiti.

Azouri described the arrests in Ghantout as a "delicate" matter made public for the first time - more than a week after the event - because the country's tribal leadership wants to demonstrate it will not tolerate open homosexuality.

On Friday the minister of justice and Islamic affairs, Mohammed bin Nukhaira Al Dhahiri, called on parents to be vigilant for "deviant" behaviour in their children.

The arrested men have been questioned by police and were undergoing psychological evaluations on Saturday. Azouri said the Interior Ministry's department of social support would try to direct the men away from homosexual behaviour, including treatment with male hormones.

"Because they've put society at risk they will be given the necessary treatment, from male hormone injections to psychological therapies," he said.

- AP