Police in Qatar arbitrarily detained and ill-treated members of the LGBTQ community ahead of next month’s World Cup, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Monday.
Homosexuality is illegal in the Gulf state, which has faced an intense scrutiny of its rights ahead of the tournament, which is expected to draw at least a million foreign fans.
HRW said it “documented six cases of severe and repeated beating and five cases of sexual harassment in police custody between 2019 and 2022.”
The latest case happened in September, the US-based rights group said.
Four transgender women, a bisexual woman and a gay man told how members of the Interior Ministry’s Preventive Security Branch held them in an underground prison in Doha.
There, “they harassed detainees and subjected them to physical abuse ranging from slaps to kicks and punches to bleeding,” HRW said.
“One woman said she had lost consciousness. Security officials also verbally abused them, extracted confessions and denied the detainees access to legal counsel, family and medical care.”
A bisexual woman from Qatar said she was beaten until she “passed out several times”.
The report added that a transgender Qatari woman recounted being held in an underground cell once for two months and once for six weeks.
“They beat me every day and shaved my hair. They also forced me to take off my shirt and took a picture of my breasts,” she said.
She said she suffered from depression and has been afraid to go public ever since.
In all cases, detainees were forced to unlock their phones and had contact information taken from other LGBTQ people, HRW said.
Sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex are illegal in the conservative Muslim state and can be punished with up to seven years in prison.
But none of those arrested said they had been charged.
HRW said the six appear to have been held under a 2002 law that allows for detention of up to six months without charge if “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the accused may have committed a crime,” including ” Violation of public morals”. ‘.”
A Qatari government official said the allegations were “categorically and clearly false”.
“Qatar will not tolerate discrimination against anyone and our policies and procedures are underpinned by a commitment to human rights for all.”
The official said the government had held talks with HRW and other critical groups, but the recent “claims were not brought to our attention until they were first reported in the media. If Human Rights Watch had contacted us, we could have refuted the allegations.”
The official said HRW’s failure to notify “compromises their self-proclaimed commitment to reporting the truth.”
The rights group called on the Doha government to “put an end to abuse of LGBT people by the security forces, including by halting all government-sponsored programs targeting conversion practices.”
The Qatari official insisted there are no “conversion centers” in the country, although there is a rehabilitation clinic that supports people suffering from behavioral disorders such as substance addiction, eating disorders and mood disorders.
HRW called on FIFA, football’s world governing body, to urge Qatar to embark on reforms to protect LGBT people.
Qatar’s World Cup organizers have increasingly assured in recent weeks that all fans are “welcome” to the World Cup.
FIFA has stated that LGBTQ rainbow flags would be allowed in and around stadiums.
England’s Harry Kane is one of a number of European team captains who have announced they will wear “OneLove” bracelets at World Cup matches to highlight rights concerns.
