GayEgypt.com has emerged as a key organization coordinating support and information for the 52 men arrested at the Queen Boat on May 11. The Middle East Times conducted an e-mail interview with Ali Asali, one of the founders of GayEgypt.com. Asali, not his real name, puts the current crackdown on Egypt's gay community into a wider context.

WHY DO YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT HAS TARGETED THE EGYPTIAN GAY COMMUNITY AT THIS TIME?
The political motives behind the current clampdown go back to the student riots at Al Azhar University in May 2000 against the supposedly blasphemous book Banquet for Seaweed. This confrontation, followed by successes by the Muslim Brotherhood in subsequent elections, scared the government.

The growing power of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt was demonstrated clearly in January when Muslim Brotherhood MP Gamal Heshmat demanded the withdrawal of three books published by the General Organization for Cultural Palaces, (GOCP), the bizarrely named publishing arm of the Ministry of Culture [Before and After by Tufiq Abdel Rahman, The Children of the Romantic Era by Yasser Shaaban and Forbidden Dreams by Mahmoud Hamed ].

The Ministry of Culture almost immediately capitulated. At the same time the Ministry, according to Al Hayaat (on January13) decided to burn 6,000 volumes by the eighth century Abassid poet Abu Nuwas, famous for his homoerotic verse.

Another motive for the clampdown may have been the economic crisis in Egypt showing itself in repeated devaluations of the Egyptian pound and in high levels of unemployment, underemployment and poverty.

The government probably thought the Queen Boat trial would be a highly convenient distraction to public attention. However I don't believe the economic causes were paramount.

The intifada and the crisis in Palestine have also influenced the strength of public feeling about sexuality. Most Egyptians view homosexuality as a sign of moral and even physical weakness and we receive many e-mails accusing us of being Zionists or of being funded by Israel.

It seems as if some people feel we are part of a conspiracy to undermine both Egypt's moral and military strength. This is despite the fact that on our site we have condemned the occupation and Israeli violations of Palestinian civil rights.

Homosexuality has always been common in Egypt and for the most part the authorities have always turned a blind eye. The Internet however allowed gays in Cairo to build a sizeable gay community, which also became (because of the Internet) increasingly visible.

YOU MAKE REFERENCE TO TORTURE OF GAYS BY THE POLICE. DO YOU HAVE ANY EVIDENCE OF THIS PRACTICE. PLEASE PROVIDE EXAMPLES.
According to one of our most regular and reliable sources, a man who is a close friend of one of the prisoners, torture of the prisoners included whippings, electrical shock and being threatened by dogs. In an e-mail to us he wrote how "On Saturday [after the arrest] he [his friend] showed the investigating magistrate the whip marks, the scars on his back and stomach."

However, while the magistrate was quick to send the prisoners for a medical examination in order to check if there was evidence of anal sex, he didn't ask for any examination of this man's wounds.

Many other prisoners also complained of torture, and given the reputation of Tora prison where they were held, the contempt with which police view gay men and the speed – a mere twelve hours - with which they all confessed, according to the Egyptian press, there can be no other conclusion except that torture was used extensively.

I also witnessed an earlier raid [of which more later] at the end of March 2000 when I saw one gay man being kicked and beaten on the pavement by three policemen as he begged them to let him go.

WHEN WAS GAYEGYPT.COM STARTED, AND WHICH COUNTRY IS IT BASED IN?
GayEgypt.com was set up in May 2000, about six weeks after two of us witnessed a gay man being beaten and kicked on the pavement as he begged to be let go during an earlier, little-known raid on the Queen Boat, at the end of March 2000, when those arrested were released after a few days.

At the time one of us had a camera specifically set up for nighttime photography but we were both too afraid either to intervene or even to photograph what happened. It was partly out of a sense of guilt and the need to bring international awareness to the situation facing the gay community in Egypt that we started the Web site. It has since been a site for the gay community and was never intended to make any profit.

Since then we have worked on the site inside Egypt, usually using Internet cafes with seats which back to the wall in order to post messages. However, at the end of June, six weeks after the Queen Boat raid, we had reason to believe that we were at increased risk of being arrested.

We were the last remaining Egyptian gay site and we had started to appeal for information on police torture, and we condemned the actions of the State Security Police as illegal and in contravention of the several articles of the U.N. Charter of Human Rights.

In February two men who had posted a web site allegedly soliciting for gay sex had been imprisoned for "bringing international disrepute to Egypt," and we didn't want to follow them.

So, after obtaining visas to a Third World country, we left Egypt. But we may have to return soon. We still have several contacts in Egypt who provide us with daily updates.

HOW MANY PEOPLE VISIT GAYEGYPT.COM ON A MONTHLY BASIS?
When we started in May 2000 we only had a few hundred visitors a month, but recently we have had up to 20,000 page views (about three thousand visitors) a day.

However the recent average has been a more modest 3,500 page views or about five hundred visitors a day (about 15,000 visitors a month).

Of these, if e-mails are regarded as being representative, possibly 40 percent are from Egypt's gay community, about one third from overseas tourists wanting to visit Egypt or with an interest in developments in Egypt, and about one quarter from gay Egyptians overseas.

However we know that many Egyptians are scared to log on to the site either too frequently or at all. In fact, a note at the top of the front page warns people of the possible dangers of logging on to our site too frequently from the same location.

Several foreigners have told us that their Egyptian friends have asked for printouts of our news pages. So we think the true number of site users is probably higher than this figure suggests.

WHAT WOULD YOU ESTIMATE IS THE SIZE OF THE GAY COMMUNITY IN EYGPT?
This is a simple but difficult question. Anthropologists and sociologists have demonstrated that homosexuality as a behavior (as distinct from an identity) is common across almost all cultures, although attitudes to it always vary.

Many Egyptians enjoy homosexual activities without ever thinking of themselves as gay. They prefer to pass as "normal" men. Measuring the size of the community is especially difficult because of the stigma and practical danger involved in "coming out" as gay, even when done in a very limited way.

Also, views about one's own sexuality depend on attitudes and availability of information within society. Many Egyptians have never even heard the word "gay". At the same time, however, it is clear that the Internet and, ironically, recent media coverage will force more and more Egyptians to reflect on their sexual identity.

Social studies in Europe and America have shown that those of a predominantly homosexual predisposition [excluding those who have just an occasional homosexual experience] number up to ten percent of the population. On this basis it is likely that given great public awareness and the freedom to choose the number of "self identifying" gay men and lesbians could eventually reach several million.

Even now it is certain that there are millions of Egyptians who are of a homosexual disposition but most have unfortunately learned to despise their true selves because of the strength of the social stigma attached to homosexuality.