Queer resistance to digital oppression in the Middle East and North Africa 

Arrests and phone searches

45% of our survey respondents and interviewees had been arrested for their sexual orientation and/or gender identity – with over 1 in 5 being arrested multiple times.

Half the interviewees experienced the police searching their devices, including to ‘verify’ their queerness, rising to nearly all of those who have ever interacted with the police. 

Entrapment

Nearly a quarter of survey respondents and interviewees have experienced app entrapment. 

This is when police officers create a fake profile and feign interest in someone to elicit a sexually explicit or ‘queer-themed’ conversation, which provides the evidence needed to charge them. The officers then arrange to meet the unsuspecting individual, and when they meet, they arrest them.

Patrolling and profiling 

60% of interviewees had been monitored, online and offline, for being queer. These profiling and patrollings (by state and non-state actors) led to arrests, further targeting, and violence.  

Violence

A quarter of survey respondents and nearly two-thirds of interviewees had experienced physical abuse and violent harassment at the hands of the police – including 7 cases of rape by state-affiliated persons. 

‘I spent 2 days [in there] where I was tortured, and they hit me. They hit my family too. For a week they didn’t let me sleep at all … They even sexually harassed me and raped me using objects.’

– Research participant, Tunisia

Extortion

In a new and concerning trend (reported 53 times in our surveys and interviews), police are using entrapment-style luring not to arrest people, but to extort them out of money or for sex with impunity.

Marginalised LGBTQI+ people

While all LGBTQI+ people in MENA are at risk of tech-enabled police violence, some are more at risk than others. 

Sex workers, trans people, and refugees reported the highest arrest rates of all our respondents – and every single respondent from these groups reported experiencing police abuse. 

LGBTQI+ people living through uprisings, protests, and conflict

We conducted our research during a deeply painful period in the MENA region, marked by Tunisia’s descent into autocracy, uprisings in Iran, and catastrophic wars in Sudan and on Gaza. 

13% of our interviewees reported arrests linked to protests and ‘morality’ policing, showing that queer people are being criminalised and targeted for their identity during national uprisings, protests, and even war.

‘The Rapid Support Forces are prevalent on dating apps during this period, which wasn’t the case before the war. This stopped [us] from using these platforms due to fear.’

– Research participant, Sudan

When ARTICLE 19 first spearheaded work on this issue back in 2016, we exposed how police in MENA were using queer dating apps (like Grindr) to entrap, arrest, and abuse LGBTQI+ people. 

Next, we revealed how the authorities were collecting digital evidence from a range of apps and platforms (like WhatsApp and Signal) to prosecute them. 

Our new research shows that the police are still using these apps to persecute LGBTQI+ people – and they have expanded their tech arsenal to include other dating and messaging apps, as well as social media platforms. It also shows how the community is resisting, and what they need from companies. 

Respondents reported that the apps most commonly used for police entrapment were the dating apps Grindr, Hornet, Sugar, Tinder, and WhosHere, as well as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. 

‘A policeman trapped me through [Facebook] Messenger … I was arrested for 10 days, and I was humiliated. [They] broke my teeth also.’ 

– Research participant, Egypt

The introduction of biometric security features (like Face ID and fingerprint recognition) to unlock devices has led to an increase in the police using violence to forcibly access LGBTQI+ people’s devices. 

Our findings show biometrics increased both privacy risks and the chances of experiencing physical violence at the hands of the police. 

In a concerning new trend, we found that the police had violently forced every single one of our respondents who had been in custody and had biometrics enabled on their device – to open their device via biometrics. 

‘At the precinct I was handcuffed, he kicked me to the floor and asked me to open it … he came close to me with the phone in his hand and forced me to place my fingerprint and open it. … They accessed Messenger and took it as an excuse to throw accusations at me.’ 

– Research participant, Lebanon

An increasing number of LGBTQI+ people are outsmarting device searches by any means necessary, including breaking their phone, claiming to have forgotten their passcode, and deleting apps before entering risky situations. They calculate that, despite the risks, these tactics are less dangerous than allowing police to access their private data. 

‘He asked me to open the phone several times. I refused … He said: “Open it, or else I will take you to the barracks and let everyone fuck you.” I told him: “Do whatever you want. I will not insert the passcode and the phone will stay closed.”’ 

– Research participant, Lebanon

Others are using harm-reduction methods, either devised themselves or with the help of safety features that tech companies introduced in response to our earlier work.

While states are ultimately responsible for protecting our rights, it is excruciatingly clear that most governments in MENA are more interested in persecuting LGBTQI+ people than protecting them. 

But tech companies also have human rights responsibilities to their users – and they urgently need to do more to meet them while we push for state-level structural change. 

Our research shows how.