[Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimanians inAlexandria

[Ray Saintonge]

Oldak Quill wrote:
> On 06/03/2008, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Just to carry the analogy to extremes, it's also a lot easier to be
>>  persecuted for false assumptions about one's sexuality than one's skin color
>>  (ie, law enforcement makes up their own mind about your sexuality, but not
>>  skin color...)
>>
>>  But I've seen no evidence of profiling of that type, to clarify.
>>
>>  Philippe
>>     
> >From a BBC News Online article
> (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/1858469.stm):
>
> "The police told the man to take down his trousers. They wanted to see
> if he was wearing typical Egyptian underwear - baggy white cotton. If
> he was not, they said he must be a homosexual. He failed the test.
>
> The police started to beat him. They tortured him for three days. Six
> months later he still has scars on his arms and back.
 From the same article:
> Homosexuality itself is not technically illegal in Egypt but it is a 
> serious taboo - culturally, socially and now politically. Gay men are 
> vilified by the press and the public.
The United States had the Rodney King case.  I'm sure we could find 
incidents like this in many other countries too.  Similarly, many places 
have incidents of gay-bashing.  None of it has any sort of official 
government support, but it happens anyway.

Ec