[Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2008 will happen in Alexandria, Egypt

[George Herbert]

On 10/10/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
> George Herbert wrote:
> > If you believe Egypt truly is significantly bad for visiting LGBT
> > tourists, there should be ample evidence thereof available.  In spite
> > of my friends' and aquaintences personal ancedotal safe trips, I went
> > looking for some evidence of risk when this thread started.  I have
> > not found anything of the sort.  There's more documented foreign
> > tourist gay bashing in San Francisco (fairly low actual rate, and
> > abhored by the local population as a whole, but there's a persistent
> > low-rate problem from homophobic fringeists) than I can find for
> > Egypt.
>
> If you use official records, there's zero gay bashing in Iran. I
> wouldn't consider Egypt's records on GLBT issues accurate, either.
>
> That's the quandary with record-keeping. The places with the most
> problems often have the worst records. Never mistake bad record keeping
> with the absence of a problem.

Where did I mention official records?

I want you to point to western sources, *anything* that has actual
"this happened to someone in Egypt" statements that justify your claim
that there's a legit problem for LGBT visitors in Egypt.

There are myriad gay travel websites and blogs.  As far as I can tell
they have no specific warnings about Egypt.  A number of them report
on visits there... and nobody reports anything other than being a
little wary of the situation.

If there's a legit threat you should be able to point me to someone
out there in the west who has documented it.  If there's a legit
threat, I would expect to have found it already.

I believe you (and the documented reports, and stuff I've heard about
and read about going back a number of years) about internal moderate
oppression of LGBT in Egypt.

I do not believe you, *because you have provided zero documentation
and I have found none elsewhere in my searches*, that Egypt's
government or law enforcement present a general or specific threat to
health and safety of LGBT visitors.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com