Gay egy

Navigate Gay Egypt with caution. Find essential travel tips, important advice, and insights for LGBTQ+ travelers in our comprehensive guide to Gay Egypt. Drape your dreams in the glow of the ancient pyramids and the vibrance of the Nile, for we’re about to embark on an audacious journey through the dynamic and enigmatic city of Gay Cairo – a city of contradictions where the LGBT experience is a spectrum as diverse as the rainbow itself.

Guide to gay Cairo, Egypt, with information on gay-friendly hotels and LGBT attractions, including popular bars and clubs for gays and lesbians. How gay-friendly is Egypt really? Our Egypt Gay Guide lists the best gay places in the most exciting cities: bars & clubs, restaurants, accommodations, saunas.

When preparing for your adventure in Egypt, LGBT travelers should consider several significant cultural and social factors. Find out more on !. In Egypt, homosexuality is highly stigmatised, and there have long been allegations that police are hunting LGBT people online. Now BBC News has seen evidence of how the authorities are using dating and social apps to do this. All victims' names have been changed. Having grown up in Egypt, I am aware of the pervasive homophobia that permeates every part of its society.

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But friends there tell me that the atmosphere has recently become far more brutal, and the tactics for tracking down LGBT people more sophisticated. There is no explicit law against homosexuality in Egypt, but our investigation has found that the crime of "debauchery" - a sex work law - is being used to criminalise the LGBT community.

Transcripts submitted in police arrest reports show how officers are posing online to seek out - and in some cases allegedly fabricate evidence against - LGBT people looking for dates online. They reveal how the police initiate text conversations with their targets. Egypt is one of the most strategically important Western allies in the Middle East and receives billions of dollars in US and EU support every year.

Around half a million British tourists visit the country annually and the UK trains Egyptian police forces, via the UN. In one text conversation between an undercover police officer and someone using the social networking and dating app WhosHere, the officer appears to be pressuring the app user to meet up in person - that person was later arrested. Police: Have you slept with men before?

Police: How about we meet? App user: But I live with mom and dad. Police: Come on dear, don't be shy, we can meet in public and then go to my flat. It is extremely difficult for LGBT people to openly meet potential dates in public in Egypt, so dating apps are a popular way to do that. But just using the apps - regardless of your sexuality - can be grounds for arrest based on the incitement of debauchery or public morality laws in Egypt.

It is not just Egyptians who are being targeted. In one transcript, police describe identifying a foreigner, who we are calling Matt, on the popular gay dating app Grindr. A police informant then engaged Matt in conversation, and - the transcript says - Matt "admitted his perversion, his willingness to engage in debauchery for free, and sent pictures of himself and his body".

Matt told the BBC that he was subsequently arrested, charged with "debauchery", and eventually deported. Viewers outside the UK can watch now, on YouTube. In some of the transcripts, the police appear to be trying to pressure people who seem to be simply seeking dates or new friendships into agreeing to sex for money. Legal experts in Egypt tell us that proving there has been an exchange of money, or an offer of one, can give the authorities the ammunition they need to take a case to court.

One such victim, whom we found through the transcripts, was a gay man we are calling Laith. In April , the contemporary dancer was contacted from a friend's phone number. The "friend" asked to meet for a drink. But when Laith arrived to meet him, his friend was nowhere in sight. He was met instead by police who arrested him and threw him into a cell belonging to the vice squad.

One policeman stubbed a cigarette out on his arm, he told me, showing me the scar. He claims police then made a fake profile for him on the WhosHere app, and digitally altered his photos to make them look explicit. He says they then mocked up a conversation on the app which appeared to show him offering sex work. He says the pictures are proof that he was framed, because the legs in the picture do not resemble his own - one of his legs is bigger than the other.