Irakisches anti-LGBT Gesetz nicht gültig in Irakisch-Kurdistan

Solange das irakisch-kurdische Parlament ihm nicht zustimmt, wird das repressive neue Gesetz gegen LGBTs aus Bagdad keine Gültigkeit in den kurdischen Autonomiegebieten des Irak haben:

The Iraqi parliament’s recent amendments to the country’s anti-prostitution law criminalizing any practice of homosexuality and transsexuality will not apply to the Kurdistan Region until the Kurdish legislature votes to pass the amendments, an advisor to the body told Rudaw.

Under the new law, anyone who engages in consensual homosexual relations shall be imprisoned for a period no less than 10 years and no longer than 15 years.

Any individual who undergoes a sex-reassignment surgery, as well as the doctor or surgeon conducting the operation, will face one to three years in jail. The bill excludes cases of medical intervention to "treat birth defects to affirm the sex of the individual," referring to genital surgeries on intersex children, which can inflict permanent harm on the individual and compromise sexual function and sensation.

“To implement the law [in the Kurdistan Region], the amendments need to be activated by the Kurdistan parliament,” Dana Dara, the Kurdish parliament’s legal advisor told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir.

The Kurdistan Region has been without a parliament for nearly a year, after Iraq’s top court in May of last year ruled that the self-extension of the Kurdistan parliament’s term by an additional year was “unconstitutional,” effectively dissolving the fifth term of the legislature.

New parliamentary elections are currently set to be held on June 10, but the process could be delayed due to the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) decision not to participate in protest over court rulings that the party deemed detrimental to the Region’s political entity.