(Beirut) – Lebanon’s Justice Ministry should immediately issue a directive ordering an end to anal examinations aspart of policeinvestigativeprocedures to determine suspects’ sexual behavior, Human Rights Watch said today. The ministry should followthe lead of the Lebanese Doctor’s Syndicate, which recently denouncedthe tests as a form of torture.
The Lebanese authorities shoulddrop all homosexuality-related charges against three men arrested during a raid ona cinema in Beirut onJuly 28, 2012, Human Rights Watch said. The government shouldtake steps to repeal article 534 of the Lebanese penal code, which criminalizes “sexual relationsagainst nature” andis usedto prosecutemen for homosexuality.
“Forensic anal examinations of men suspectedof homosexualcontact, conductedin detention, constitute degradingand humiliating treatment,” said Rasha Moumneh , a MiddleEast and North Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, based in Beirut. “These ‘tests of shame,’ as Lebanese rights organization the Legal Agenda has dubbed them, should stop immediately – the state has no business punishing and degradingits citizensfor consensual sexual conduct.”
The Internal Security Forces vicesquad arrested 36 men during the July 28 raid on a movie theater suspectedof screeningpornographic movies in the Burj Hammoud district of Beirut, the third suchraid in recentmonths. The men were transferred to Hbeich policestation, where they weresubjectedto anal examinations. The examinations are conductedby forensicdoctorson orders of the public prosecutor to “prove” whether a person has engagedin homosexual sex. The policereleasedall of the men severaldays later but chargedthree of them under article 534, partly onthe basis of the examinations.
Lebanese public prosecutors often order invasive and abusive, anal examination procedures for men suspectedof homosexualsex, Human Rights Watch said. Lebanese civilsociety organization the Legal Agenda has spearheadedeffortsto end these examinations, leadingthe head of the Lebanese Doctor’s Syndicate, Dr. Sharaf Abu Sharaf, to issue a directiveon August 8 calling for anend to anal examinations, stating that they are medically and scientificallyuseless in determining whether consensual anal sex has taken place and that they constitute a form of torture. He addedthat they also violate article 30 of the Lebanese law onmedical ethics, which prohibits doctorsfrom engaging in harmful practices.
The tests also violateinternational standardsagainst torture, including the ConventionAgainst Torture and the International Covenant onCivil andPolitical Rights, which Lebanon has ratified. The U.N. Committee Against Torture, in its 2002 review of Egypt, investigatedthe issue of forensicanal examinations and calledon the government “to preventall degrading treatment on the occasion of body searches.”
The tests are also carried out in violationof professional medical principles, including those of the World Medical Associationandthe UN Principles of Medical Ethics Relevant to the Role of Health Personnel, Particularly Physicians, in the Protectionof
Prisoners andDetaineesAgainst Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or DegradingTreatment or Punishment. Principle 4 of the document states that:
"It is a contraventionof medical ethics forhealth personnel, particularly physicians… to apply their knowledge and skills in order to assist in the interrogation of prisonersanddetaineesin a manner that may adversely affect the physical or mental health or conditionof such prisonersor detaineesandwhich is not in accordancewith the relevant international instruments."
Inaddition, they have no evidentiary valueand their findings shouldnot be regardedas probativein a court of law.
Researchconductedby Human Rights Watch on police abuse of marginalized groups in Lebanonhas shown that both policeand doctorsuseinvasive bodily examinations, both anal andvaginal, asa form of punishment, intimidation, andhumiliation. InAugust 2010, a policeofficerat the Msaitbeh PoliceStation threatenedto physicallyforcea Human Rights Watch researcher and a local activist, who were visitinga detained man chargedwith “unnatural sexual relations,” to submit to a “virginity test,” in aneffort to intimidate and humiliate them.
A young man told the Legal Agenda andlater confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the doctor who performedananal examination onhim in June, after policearrested him on suspicion of homosexuality, tried to threaten him into confessing, tellinghim that if the test turned out “positive” and he had lied about his homosexuality, hispunishment would be much harsher.
Ina statement given to the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar onAugust 2, Justice Minister Shakib Qortbawi said that he had two months earlierwritten AttorneyGeneral Said Mirzaurging him “to halt random rectal examinationprocedures, after the issue was raised by human rights organizations.” However, the attorney general’s subsequentdirective, the text of which Legal Agenda, a Lebanese rights organization, publishedon August 7, contradictsthe Minister’s statement to Al-Akhbar .
Far from ordering anend to the procedures, the attorney general’s directive in fact institutionalized them further, instructing public prosecutors to order the anal examination be carried out only “with the consent of the accused, according to standard medical procedures, andin a manner that does not cause significantharm.” The directiveaddedthat if the accused refused to undergo the examination, he should be informed that hisrefusal “constitutes proofof the crime.”
Anal andvaginal examinations are usedin various countries asa form of torture, humiliation, and degradation. Human Rights Watch documentedthe use of forensicanal examinations in Egypt on 52 men arrested for “debauchery” in a popular nightclub in
Cairo in 2002. More recently, Human Rights Watch
criticizedEgyptian authoritiesfor forcingdetained female activists to undergo vaginal examinations in March 2011 asa way to intimidate and silence them for their political work. In Iraq, courts routinely force women to undergovaginal examinations to determine their virginity, often at the request of their families.
As part of its obligationto respectthe privatelives and personal liberties of individuals, the Lebanese governmentshould end these tests of shame andrepeal laws criminalizing consensual sex between adults, including article 534, Human Rights Watch said.
“These hurtful anddegrading examinations shouldstop immediately, especially now that the Lebanese Doctor’s Syndicatehas made clear that they are forensically valueless and constitute a form of torture,” Moumneh said. “The governmentshould be concerned with the securityand livelihoodsof its citizens, rather than subjectingthem to abuse under the guise of determining their sexual practices.”
