Known on social media as \u201cNoor BM,\u201d 23-year-old Noor Alsaffar had over 370,000 followers collectively on Instagram and TikTok. Alsaffar mostly posted short videos showing dresses, hair and makeup styles, often dancing to music. Following news of the shooting, many posted comments lamenting Alsaffar\u2019s death. Some others cheered it, celebrating the man who fired the shot. <\/p>\n
Khaled Almehna, spokesperson for the Iraqi police, described the attack as a \u201ccriminal incident\u201d on Tuesday, adding that he will provide \u201cimportant updates\u201d at a later time. <\/p>\n
The killing comes as Iraq cracks down on LGBTQ expression and moves to criminalize it in law. While being queer is not explicitly banned under current Iraqi legislation, LGBTQ people are often targeted under vague morality clauses in its penal code. <\/p>\n
Before the shooting, Alsaffar faced online abuse, as well as questions about sexuality and gender. In a 2020 interview on Iraq\u2019s Al Walaa channel, Alsaffar said: \u201cI\u2019m not transgender and I\u2019m not gay. I don\u2019t have other tendencies, I\u2019m only a cross-dresser and a model.\u201d Alsaffar identified as a male who worked as a model and makeup artist. <\/p>\n
Alsaffar spoke in videos about facing threats on social media over choices of dressing. <\/p>\n
In a 2021 YouTube interview with Iraqi blogger Samir Jermani, Alsaffar said: \u201cI\u2019m cautious but not afraid\u201d in response to a question about the TikToker\u2019s appearance. <\/p>\n
The Iraqi LGBTQ rights group, IraQueer, posted about Alsaffar\u2019s death, adding the hashtags #Transphobia and #MuderOfTransPeople on X, formerly known as Twitter. <\/p>\n
A new law has been proposed in the Iraqi parliament that explicitly criminalizes gay sex, transgender expression and other forms of LGBTQ conduct. If adopted, it would punish same-sex relations with the death penalty or life in prison, punish \u201cpromoting homosexuality\u201d with a minimum sentence of seven years, and criminalize \u201cimitating women\u201d with up to a three-year sentence. <\/p>\n
Violence and discrimination against LGBTQ people in the country has increased noticeably in recent months, rights groups say. The country has seen protests, mostly by supporters of Shiite Muslim factions, burning the rainbow flag in response to recent Quran burnings in Sweden and Denmark. HRW says violence against LGBTQ people in Iraq \u201chas routinely been met with impunity.\u201d <\/p>\n
Iraq\u2019s media regulator in August banned the term \u201chomosexuality\u201d across all traditional and social media platforms, demanding that the term \u201csexual deviance\u201d be used instead. <\/p>\n
Rights groups have decried growing crackdowns on LGBTQ communities in the Middle East, including what Human Rights Watch found to be digital targeting based on online activity. <\/p>\n
Online targeting is often followed by extreme punitive measures, including arbitrary detention and torture, the rights watchdog said in February after examining LGBTQ rights violations in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. <\/p>\n\n
Known on social media as \u201cNoor BM,\u201d 23-year-old Noor Alsaffar had over 370,000 followers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10913,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketmakersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}