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Do authorities in Egypt target homosexuals? Does this involve raids on private residences? Do any extremist groups or other non-state actors target homosexuals? Are there any places in Egypt where gays can live openly, without fear of targeting?
Are there gay haunts in Egypt where gays can meet and interact with each other without fear of violence? Are there any reports of the arrest of 10 men, either a human rights or gay rights group, in February in Cairo or El Arish? Does the Coptic Christian church deny gay men the right to worship? Is lesbian activity illegal?
Are lesbians mistreated by police and other authorities? Police kept him locked up for two weeks after that, refusing to allow visitors and even denying that he was in custody.
The cell was underground, no windows, no light, no bed, no ventilation, a dirty blanket, two bottles of water, and a loaf of bread. For days, I did not see the sun and was not allowed any visitors except my parents, whom I had left seven years prior and did not want to see. I felt comforted by her presence, she smiled and told me to stay strong. All victims were held in pretrial detention for prolonged periods, in one case up to four months, often without access to legal counsel. Views Read Edit View history. And to different extents, both platforms feel that they have some responsibility for keeping their users safe. October 3,
Eventually, the authorities offered him an informal deportation — a chance to leave the country, in exchange for signing away his asylum rights and paying for the ticket himself. He jumped at the chance, leaving Egypt behind forever. The apps themselves have become both evidence of a crime and a means of resistance.
How an app is built can make a crucial difference in those cases. But with developers thousands of miles away, it can be hard to know what to change. The most recent wave of arrests started last September after an audience member unfurled a gay pride flag at a rock concert, something the regime took as a personal insult. More than 75 people were arrested on debauchery charges in the weeks that followed. For those in the community, the threat of violence is hard to escape.
As LGBTQ Egyptians flock to apps like Grindr, Hornet, and Growlr, they At the last minute, his date pulled up in a car and offered to take Firas directly to his apartment. Targets meet a friendly stranger on a gay dating site, sometimes Egypt's state media has largely cheered on the crackdown, treating a. Alexandria Egypt's best % FREE gay dating site. Sign up now to place your free gay personal ad and check out the ads of other available gay singles in.
There were so many horrific stories about people being imprisoned or blackmailed or put under some sort of pressure for their sexuality. It was disturbing. Raids on bars, house parties, and other gay spaces have become common. As a result, channels for private communications like dating apps Grindr and Hornet are particularly important here. And to different extents, both platforms feel that they have some responsibility for keeping their users safe.
In the weeks after the September crackdown, both Grindr and Hornet began sending out warnings through their apps, notifying users of the crackdown and giving the same advice about retaining a lawyer and watching for police accounts. The messages served as a kind of early warning system, a way to spread news of the new threat as quickly as possible.
Since , Grindr has warned Egyptian users about blackmailers and recommended keeping their account as anonymous as possible. Some users even create profiles to warn others that a specific individual is a blackmailer or a cop. On Hornet, more than half the accounts have pictures, though many stay obscured.
One Egyptian man told me that when he visited Berlin on vacation, he was shocked to see that every Grindr profile had a face; it had never occurred to him that so many people might out themselves online. Screenshots are dangerous for the people who take them, too: a Grindr shot in your camera roll could easily become evidence in a debauchery case. Just having the app on your phone is a risk.
Even if you know all the rules, all it takes is one slip to fall into the trap. A local nonprofit worker named Youssef told me he tells friends not to use the apps if they have other options. At the same time, Grindr has struggled with a string of recent security issues, leaking profile data through third-party plugins and sharing HIV statuses with analytics partners. None of those slip-ups seem to have been exploited by Egyptian groups, but they can hardly be reassuring to users.
Hornet president Sean Howell told me it was a deliberate choice. We send warnings. But we have , users in Cairo.
Are we going to send them back to a digital closet? One of the biggest challenges in designing these features is the culture gap between users like Firas and the designers at Grindr and Hornet. Both apps were built amid a thriving, sex-positive gay culture. In most countries, they represent that culture pushed to its limit.
Thousands of miles away from the most vulnerable users, how would you know if you made the wrong choice? Researchers who are partnering with platforms have been struggling with those questions for years, and apps like Grindr have given researchers a new way to answer them. Once we start messaging them, it creates more of a network. Once he saw how powerful the geo-targeted messages could be, he started looking for more places to use them. The project would focus on three Middle Eastern countries with different degrees of repression: Egypt, Iran, and Lebanon.
Egypt faced the most intense crackdown, but the threat had more to do with police intimidation than actual convictions. Iran faces a more subtle version of the same threat, with police more interested in cultivating informants than raiding bathhouses and making headlines. Lebanon is seen as one of the best places to be gay in the region, even though homosexuality is still illegal there. The greatest threat is being accidentally outed at a military checkpoint and swept up in a broader counterterrorism effort. The project culminated in an person roundtable the following summer, bringing together representatives from Grindr, Article 19, local groups like EIPR, and digital rights technology groups like Witness and the Guardian Project.
After Article 19 and local groups presented the results of the survey , the group puzzled through a series of possible fixes, voting on them one by one. The local groups were talking about what they think could help their community. The technologists were talking about the features that they could help create.