Peter Tatchell: If So...

#Qatar to test foreign workers & ban #trans? If so, @FIFAcom must move 2022 World Cup: http://t.co/SMCaHhP2jH @PFA @kickitout @FA #FA
— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) October 11, 2013

Does this mean Peter Tatchell is now saying this story he wrote for Pink News and elsewhere - which he'd done so much to spread - is actually not true?

If so, I'm sure he will apologise, and offer a public retraction.

PS Odd story on Pink News, Gulf countries propose ‘mandatory examination to determine gender’ for migrant workers. It includes statements from Peter Tatchell, but does not mention that he wrote a story about a "gay test" for tourists etc. 

I'm sure Peter would have mentioned this, so hope PN will amend their story.

I have contacted Tatchell several times, but he has not had time to reply yet.

Update: There appears to be a serious editing error in the Guardian article, Gulf countries consider medical checks to bar transgender expats, which also overlooks how Tatchell was promoting the fiction that Gulf states were proposing a "gay test" on visitors.

It also doesn't acknowledge Scott Long, who researched this and told Peter about his embarrassing error.  

Still no reply from Peter - fair enough, there's no law saying he has to reply to me. 

He's been very busy on Twitter, I see.

Immigration: Us V Them

While they wait, some for up to 16 years, asylum seekers languish in housing condemned by the committee as, in some cases, "appalling". Not just a shambles, degrading also. The committee was rightly outraged by testimony from gay and lesbian asylum seekers, some of whom were required to go to extraordinary lengths to establish sexuality. Having exhausted all reasonable ways of making a case, a few resorted to handing over photographic and video evidence of "highly personal sexual activity". Is this a system we can be proud of? The anti-war slogan comes to mind: not in my name...

Hugh Muir in The Guardian, after the Tories announced they were "getting tough" on immigration and asylum, yet again.

Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to 'detect' gay people and stop them from entering the country

Daily Mail, October 7th.

The Mail story was widely reported as above (their own has since been updated).

It is a gross distortion.

As Scott Long has reported, no-one in Kuwait - or Qatar - has proposed some new "gay test" for tourists.

Rather; "The Kuwait Ministry of Health has proposed tightening genetic tests for immigrant workers in order to prevent transgender migrants from entering the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] job market."

The "gay test" fiction was reported in the international LGBT media and elsewhere.

Please let Fagburn know of any you see who have published a correction or an update on the story, ie one that is actually accurate.

At the time of typing, despite polite requests from many individuals, I know of none.

[Edit: Towleroad gave the earliest and most transparent correction I saw. More usually, where the real story was printed, they were mendacious, and the fact that they had published a garbled version before disappeared down an Orwellian Memory Hole].

Thanks to @undersided

Qatar: What's (Really) Going On (In Kuwait)?

I first noticed it yesterday on Pink News, the UK’s G-and-sometimes-LBT news website: a new horror from the Persian Gulf. “It was revealed that Gulf Cooperative Countries introduced new rules to ‘detect’ and ban gay people from entering the country.” 

It doesn’t take long for any story about Arabs and sex to go viral. In this case, given that Qatar is hosting the 2022 World Cup, the headlines hitched a ride with anxieties over the Sochi Olympics, and turned into warnings about threats to sports. 

Peter Tatchell leapt in headfirst, proclaiming that “FIFA now has no option but to cancel the world cup,” because “gay players and spectators will be banned from attending.” The story was soon in the Daily Mail: “Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to ‘detect’ gay people.” Russia Today picked it up (probably hoping that they could lure Jamie Kirchick to move his strip show to Al Jazeera). Of course it spread all over Twitter...

Scott Long, Kuwait’s “medical screening for gays”: Truth, fiction, and why it’s not a “gay” issue.

Things are once again a bit more complicated and very different from the usual screaming from certain queer quarters.
Forgive my clumsy summary, but in fine; there is no new law, someone from the Kuwait health department mentioned in an interview the already existing medical screenings of new foreign workers, and proposed these could also check for "the third sex" - this is about ongoing moral panics about migrant labour, and transphobia (it is unclear what, if anything, he proposes doing about "tests" for homosexuality, if that were possible).
This story's distortion and over-excitable transmission, as ever, says much about our own Islamophobia and Orientalism.

"So let’s be clear: this is a matter of employment screening – of people coming into the Gulf to live and work, people who already have to undergo medical testing on arrival. It’s not a screening for every arrival at the airport. It does not mean, as Tatchell claimed, “that gay players and spectators will be banned from attending the football world cup.” Whatever Dr. Mindkar has in mind, the sacred anuses of fans and footballers will be exempt, unless they plan to settle down and get jobs as gardeners or drivers in the Gulf after the games are through..."

The idea that the bottom inspectors will be examining every man entering the Gulf states is a ludicrous fiction.

Update: Scott Long updates this story...

"The Kuwait Ministry of Health has proposed tightening genetic tests for immigrant workers in order to prevent transgender migrants from entering the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] job market."

Quilliam: Queer Bedfellows

The big shock story breaking today has been that the EDL's founder and leader, Tommy Robinson - the racist hooligan properly known as Stephen Lennon - has quit his group the Whiteshits claiming, without a hint of irony, he was concerned it had become "too extreme".
The Guardian said; "His decision was announced in a press release from the counter-extremism thinktank the Quilliam Foundation, which said it had "facilitated" Robinson's departure and that of the EDL co-founder. Kevin Carroll, also from Luton."

Robinson and the Muslim group Quilliam are now said to be working together.

This sounds most odd, but did not surprise some who have been monitoring Qulliam's activities.
They have a history of making some very strange enemies and allies.

The Guardian's Seamus Milne expressed his concerns when the thinktank was founded five years ago; "These are good times to be in the "moderate Muslim" business. If you press the right buttons on integration and "radicalisation" and hold your tongue on western foreign policy, there are rich pickings to be had - from both private and government coffers." *

This proved prophetic.

The Quilliam Foundation has received millions from the UK Foreign Office and Home Office.
But for doing what?
Islamophobia Watch - which documents stories about those they believe are harming Britain's Muslim community - has run over 70 stories critical of Quilliam.
A wit of Wildean proportions might call them the Quisling Foundation.
Hahaha!
Fagburn wonders what one of today's leading "anti-imperialist" LGBT slash human rights campaigners has to say about this controversial group...

Oops!
Thankfully, Saint Peter has often reminded everyone that he is opposed to Islamophobia - despite numerous silly assertions to the contrary by Islamophobia Watch, and others on the left, that he often helps fuel it.
Tatchell often claims to be a brave lonely voice on the left speaking out against "Islamofascism".
Fomer comrade Ken Livingstone, among others on the left, have seen this as evidence of Tatchell's Islamic Conspiracy Theory.

"Clearly, Tatchell, whom I strongly defended against homophobia when he was selected as the Labour candidate in Bermondsey, has lost his political bearings and constructed a fantasy world in which the main threat we face, worse than the far right, is Islamic fundamentalist hordes.

"It is not surprising that this approach takes him into a de facto alliance with the American neo-cons and Israeli intelligence services who want to present themselves as defending western "civilisation" against more "backward" civilisations in the Middle East and elsewhere. In reality, as with racism in the age of colonialism, this Islamophobic ideology serves to anaesthetise western audiences to the crimes being committed to justify the seizure of lands in occupied Palestine and the invasion of Iraq."

Tatchell's been speaking out today - in a rare press release - about an apparent ban on gay men entering Kuwait, Qatar and other Gulf States.
[Edit: Apparently not quite so - see Scott Long].

Anyone know which of these are also bankrolling Quilliam?

The EDL has made much play of claiming they were pro-gay and one reason they were against extreme Islamism was because it was homophobic.
Will Tatchell and Robinson be sharing a platform about this soon?

Thankfully for Tommy Robinson, Peter Tatchell can always be counted on to "bravely" speak out.
Unfortunately, all too often, without thinking what it may serve, beyond his own ego. **

* For a documented list of Quilliam's links to right-wing organisations, services to imperialism, criticisms of other Muslim groups, and somewhat bizarre political positions read this.

** It seems no matter which country the New American Empire has declared this week's Global Enemy Number One, Peter is usually ready to do his little bit to help the war effort by further demonising them.
Here's a favourite claim he first made in May 1999 when NATO was bombing the fuck out of Serbia.

In some conquered villages, Serb soldiers rounded up the men and boys, stripped them naked, and forced the boys to fellate their fathers, and the fathers to sodomise their sons.

And did they bounce their babies on their bayonets, too?

Astonishing, Peter, astonishing...