‘There’s really no future left’ – Afghanistan’s LGBT+ community

Published

3 years ago

December 5, 2022

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After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, the UK government made a promise to take in those who had helped UK forces during the war, and those most vulnerable to persecution.

But many of the most at-risk, including “thousands” of LGBT+ Afghans, were left behind, according to Nemat Sadat, the executive director of LGBT+ charity Roshaniya.

Speaking to the Sky News Daily podcast with Niall Paterson, Sadat, who left Afghanistan in 2013 after hostility to his sexuality, said that “there’s really no future left for LGBT+ people in Afghanistan”.

Homosexuality is currently illegal under Afghanistan’s Islamic law, and transgender people are not recognised by the state. The punishment for being gay is the death penalty.

“It’s the probably the worst place to be an LGBT+ person. And under the Taliban rule, under Sharia law, the Taliban are continuing to entrap LGBT+ people. Once they find an LGBT+ person, they torture them,” Sadat continued.

“And they tell us, if you want this torture to end, you have to basically present us with your entire network of LGBT+ people, give us their names, give us their contact information so we can track and find them.”

One gay man still in Afghanistan is 23-year-old Arseen. We’ve changed his name to protect his identity.

He told the Sky News Daily: “I’m escaping from my own family right now because my uncles, they are religious leaders, they beat me.”

He described how, despite Afghanistan being hostile to the LGBT+ community before, at least he could continue with his life. Now, Arseen lives in hiding, after losing his work and then university placement, for fear of being outed. “I’m losing my hope for my future. The Taliban, they destroyed every chance [of one].”

Both Arseen and Sadat accuse the UK government of not doing enough to support and protect LGBT+ Afghans.

One of the schemes designed to help resettle Afghans in the UK following the Taliban takeover is the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme. Among the scheme’s priority groups are LGBT+ people.

The Sky News Daily asked the Home Office, which runs the scheme, for a response. It directed Sky News to the Foreign Office.

An FCDO spokesperson said: “The UK was one of the first countries since the fall of Kabul to facilitate a safe relocation route for at-risk LGBT+ Afghans. Many are already in the UK, while some have been relocated to other safe countries or are undergoing processing in third countries for relocation to the UK. We will continue to do all we can to help at-risk LGBT+ Afghans.”

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World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

5 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

11 hours ago

August 10, 2025