Egypt's latest target: Gays

Apologists for Egyptian strongman Abdel Fatah al-Sissi say the brutal repression he has unleashed since leading a 2013 military coup is necessary to combat domestic terrorists, including a branch of the Islamic State.

That does not explain why dozens of secular liberal democrats have been imprisoned, nor why journalists, civil society groups, human rights activists and even an Italian doctoral student have become targets for security forces and prosecutors.

It also does not explain an underpublicized but ugly crackdown on a community that has nothing to do with Islamist extremism: gay and transgender people.

Homosexuality is not a criminal offense in Egypt, but according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), nearly 200 people have been arrested under the Sissi regime since late 2013 on charges of "debauchery."

A number have been sentenced to shockingly long prison terms.

On April 24, a court in the Cairo district of Agouza handed down prison terms ranging from three to 12 years to 11 individuals who, according to the EIPR, were variously charged with "inciting to and facilitating debauchery, habitual debauchery" and "the abuse of a communications medium" - that is, the Internet.

The gay men being rounded up are hardly flaunting their activity. According to activists, gay men in Egypt are terrified; many have emigrated and those who remain do their best to hide their sexual lives. But the police are hunting them down. According to the EIPR, state agents are using fake websites and social media postings to entrap gays or to harvest their home addresses for raids. Those arrested are subjected to deliberate humiliation: The EIPR reported the men are frequently subjected to rectal exams, even though in most debauchery cases, the results of the tests are not introduced into evidence in court.

Egypt's assault on gay men is another example of how much of the world remains hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, despite the recent progress in the West. As we reported last month, some 75 countries still criminalize same-sex acts; Islamist extremists recently assaulted and killed two gay activists in Bangladesh. Authoritarian regimes in Russia, Uganda and elsewhere deliberately inflame hatred of gay people as a way of distracting attention from their own corruption.

It's hard to know if that is Sissi's intention. Certainly, he has plenty of reason to distract Egyptians, who appear increasingly fed up with the government's failure to revive the economy or defeat the real terrorists based in the Sinai Peninsula. What's clear is that the campaign against gay people is one of the multiple ways in which repression in Egypt has outstripped that of any regime in modern times. It has nothing to do with combating terrorism or even Islamism - and sooner or later, it's sure to backfire.