Islamic State: Gay men open up about IS torture at UN Security Council meeting

In the first ever council meeting on LGBT rights of United Nation Security Council, gay men from Iraq and Syria have spoken up about their first hand experience of escape from terror under the Islamic State.

The Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in the territories of Iraq and Syria, are creating ruckus by targeting gay men in the territory.

One of victims named Subhi Nahas, who now works for a refugee organisation in the United States, shared the experience of the treatment that gay men receive in his Syrian hometown of Idlib. He said gays were often pelted with stones and hurled from rooftops. Not only that, Nahas also said gay men are more than often targeted and eventually killed by ISIS militants.

If the victims did not die from the fall, they were stoned to death, added Nahas.

Nahas thought that his journey was also going to face a similar end. In the closed-door informal meeting of the UN organised by the United States and Chile to draw attention to "brutal attacks" by the militants, he spoke on how terrified he was to leave his home, and how unsafe things were at their end because his father always used to monitor him after he found Nahas was gay.

“I bear a scar on my chin as a token of his rage," added Nahas.

Jessica Stern, director of the International Gay and Lesbian Rights Commission, informed members at the meeting about IS militants’ executions of at least 30 gay men for “sodomy” and the videos or photos that had been uploaded by them to show their merciless killings.

Adnan, another victim of Iraqi origin, spoke to the members from an undisclosed location in the Middle East. He shared the brutality he had to suffer at the hands of Iraqi security forces before IS fighters showed up, and feared his family could have helped the IS militants in revealing his whereabouts.

Adnan, whose name has been changed for safety purposes, also said that ISIS militants hunt down gay men and that once they are captured, their phone contacts and Facebook friends are checked by the IS militants.

"If one goes, the others will be taken down too," he added.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said this was the first time the U.N. Security Council had discussed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. She called the long overdue meeting "historic" as it turns 70 this year.

"It is impossible not to take up the struggle for their rights as our own as we have other great human rights struggles," she said during the meeting. Meanwhile, Security Council members Angola and Chad decided not attend it.

Addressing the council, Nahas urged the government to help the sexual minorities and end the five-year-long war in Syria to assure security to the Syrian people. He asserted that sexual minorities in the Middle East are also seeking to protect their rights, which have been denied by IS militants.

The U.S. is involved in bringing the ISIS group down, having led an international coalition since June 2014 after IS militants seized the Iraqi city of Mosul.

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