Jacob Wirtschafter

Special for USA TODAY

CAIRO — Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are living in fear in Egypt after a spike of arrests aimed at repressing LGBT people.

In the latest of a series of moves to harass gay people, armed officers swept into a popular cafe in downtown Cairo last week and detained at least a dozen gay men at a nearby police station.

The raid came as an Egyptian lawmaker introduced a bill this month to lengthen prison sentences for gay people from a maximum of three years to 25 years, alleging that there has been a recent increase in lesbian relationships.

The crackdown on homosexuality is being driven in part by denunciations by Islamic groups that consider gay relationships sinful.

“Homosexuality is a sickness and disgrace that would be better hidden from view and not promoted for dissemination until it is treated and its disgrace removed,” said Mahram Mohammed Ahmed, chief of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, a government body.

“We call upon these homosexuals to conceal their flaws and their sinful acts, not flaunt them, because they are an evil that must be rooted out.”

Some supporters of gay rights have refused to be deterred by such rhetoric and have demonstrated solidarity for the LBGT community. On Sept. 22, fans of the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila held a rainbow flag at a rock concert where lead singer Hamed Sinno, who is openly gay, imitated the late Queen icon Freddie Mercury.

“Hamed Sinno is a role model for us,” said Ramiz Saadan, 24, a dentistry student at Cairo’s Ain Shams University. “It’s nice for a change to see someone who's actually openly gay singing on stage, and 30,000 people not only singing along but also cheering like crazy."

The flag-waving incident prompted Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni religious authority in Egypt, to call on Muslim preachers nationwide to denounce gays in their Friday sermons in an effort “to stop those who seek to spread their abnormalities among Egyptian society.”

At least 71 people have been detained by Egypt's national security forces since the concert and two people were arrested.

“The magnitude of arrests might be larger than what we know but these are the only cases that we have managed to document or intervene legally,” said Dalia Abdel Hamid, gender and women’s rights officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Homosexuality is not illegal under Egyptian law, but LGBT people have frequently been targeted through a series of anti-prostitution and debauchery laws t;hat carry prison sentences from six months to three years.

The United Nations recently said it is worried over the growing trend of arrests of LGBT people across the Muslim world.

“We are deeply concerned about a wave of arrests in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia of more than 180 people perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender,” said Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.

Since the concert, Egypt’s state-controlled television has pursued an anti-gay campaign. Prime-time TV host Ahmed Moussa has said, “Homosexuality is a crime that’s as terrible as terrorism.”

Some analysts believe the crackdown is an effort by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to distract attention from his country's mounting economic problems and criticism that his government is too secular following the 2013 ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, a devout practitioner of Islam who rose to power through the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

“Since the military kicked the Muslim Brotherhood out of power, there is an accusation the Sisi government is not adhering to the strictures of Islam,” said Nazeeha Saeed, an exiled Bahraini journalist who monitors Arabic media portrayals of gays and lesbians for Out Right, an international LGBT rights organization. “For the administration to prove the opposite, they are cracking down on homosexuality to show how much they are keeping morals.”

She said that a study of 230 newspaper articles and TV talk shows mentioning gays and lesbians found 187 were negative. “The Egyptian media is supporting the authorities’ operation to arrest anybody that is connected with, supporting or from the LGBT community," Saeed said. "We contrast that with Lebanon where civil society groups managed to educate the media to be less homophobic."

Concert-goer Saadan said he has lost hope that he can live as an openly gay man in Egypt.

“People are afraid to even chat to their friends on Facebook," Saadan said. "Because when the cops raid cafes looking for gay people, they take their mobile phones and start asking who of their contacts is also a homosexual.”

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