A gay man who had resided in Qatar alleged that the police there “hunted” him before gang-raping him in a hotel room. The incident reportedly took place in 2018.
The victim, a Filipino, alleged that while employed as an office assistant in the nation hosting the Football World Cup, he was approached by six men. He said that a different individual sent him a message on a gay dating app posing as a Turkish worker and offering him a sizeable sum of money in exchange for visiting his hotel room. The victim was then confronted by six men who were later identified as Qatari police as he entered the room on the eleventh floor. He said that he was trapped there and later sexually assaulted.
“I really wanted to jump the window but I can’t, it’s too high and I’m already cornered inside the room. They catch me and threw me on the bed. They started to rape me,” he said.
EXCLUSIVE “Qatari officials gang-raped me for being gay.” Hunted down on dating apps, beaten, raped, imprisoned and deported – as the media focuses on fans at the World Cup, LGBT people who’ve lived in Qatar reveal what the authorities do to them in secrethttps://t.co/r7o4xasZrI
— Patrick Strudwick (@PatrickStrud) November 2, 2022
A British news outlet called “I News” first reported on November 2—just two weeks before the FIFA World Cup in Qatar—that Ali, a Filipino office worker in Doha, had made the decision to go public with his claims that he had been gang raped at a hotel in 2018.
He alleges that as soon as one officer stopped harassing him, another began. After searching his suitcase and accusing him of being a prostitute, another gay male arrived after being persuaded into the hotel as well. Both were subsequently transported to a police station and fined 300 Qatari Rial. Ali was held in custody that night before being taken to a deportation centre and having his visa terminated.
“I slept in the jail for one night and when I woke up, they took me to the deportation centre. There I waited for two days to receive my passport and ticket to go back to the Philippines. They cancelled all my papers,” he said.
Recently, there has been widespread coverage of the alleged gang rape of Ali by Qatari security personnel in both the LGBT+ media and the British press.
Reports allege that several other LGBT persons were also similarly ‘hunted’ by Qatar’s police personnel. LGBT+ campaigners have been told not to travel despite Al Khater’s claims that the territory is safe. According to the country’s penal code, homosexuality is illegal in Qatar and is punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Qatar is hosting the next FIFA World Cup despite its appalling record on human rights. The anti-homosexual laws in Qatar, which put lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in fear of jail time or perhaps the death penalty, are one of the biggest causes for concern.
