The human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has been stopped by police in Qatar while staging a protest against the Gulf state’s criminalization of LGBTQ+ people.
Tatchell’s protest outside the National Museum of Qatar in the capital, Doha, comes less than a month before the start of the FIFA World Cup, which is expected to attract 1.2 million visitors from around the world.
Reuters reported that two uniformed police officers and three plainclothes officials arrived at the scene, taking possession of his placard and photographing Tatchell’s passport and other papers, and those of a man accompanying him. Reuters said police left after shaking hands with Tatchell, who remained on the sidewalk.
Tatchell said he and a colleague, Simon Harris, who filmed the protest, were arrested and detained at the scene but the Qatari government has denied this.
The veteran campaigner was holding a placard that read: “Qatar arrests, jails & subjects LGBTs to ‘conversion’ #QatarAntiGay.”
The Peter Tatchell Foundation said it was the first LGBT+ protest in Qatar or any Gulf state.
The incident adds to mounting pressure on Qatar over its treatment of the LGBTQ+ community and migrant workers, as well as other human rights concerns. Qatari law criminalizes both male and female homosexuality, with sentences of one to three years for adults convicted of consensual gay or lesbian sex.
Speaking via Zoom from Doha international airport, Tatchell said he was arrested and detained on the roadside by Qatari authorities for 49 minutes after protesting outside the museum for 35 minutes.
He said: “The first carload of security officials arrived in an unmarked Land Rover and started taking photographs. Then about five minutes later a police car arrived. The police came over and took away the placard and began to interrogate me.
“They then notice that my colleague was taking photographs and videos, [and] confiscated his phone, and deleted photographs and videos. They took our passports and boarding passes. We were not allowed to leave or to to continue the protest.
“The police were not abusive or threatening. But they did make it clear that we should go to the airport and leave the country.”
Qatar’s government communications office denied that Tatchell had been arrested. It said in a statement: “Rumours on social media that a representative from the Peter Tatchell Foundation has been arrested in Qatar are completely false and without merit. An individual standing in a traffic roundabout was cordially and professionally asked to move to the sidewalk, no arrests were made.”
