The UAE Ministry of Interior has denied reports that 26 people arrested earlier this month for participating in a gay wedding party at an Abu Dhabi hotel were being forced to take hormone or drug treatments.
"They have not been treated with hormones or any other medicines," a spokesman for the ministry was quoted as saying Wednesday by Gulf News. "What has been reported in the local and international media is wholly inaccurate."
Emirate law currently prohibits homosexuality.
The same source also rejected the statement by the US State Department, according to WAM. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack condemned the arrests, warning that any sort of hormone treatment for the detainees would be a breech of international law.
"We call on the government of the United Arab Emirates to immediately stop any ordered hormone and psychological treatment and to comply with the standards of international law," he said, according to the BBC.
The Emirati minister, however, stressed that any such punishment would not be part of the ministry's duties. "Only the judiciary can issue appropriate rulings as per the UAE laws," he said, stressing that the judiciary is the only authority that implement laws of the UAE's constitution.
He said that it was the duty of the ministry to help those arrested, and that its obligation did not exceed this role.
He also called on the media to abstain from exaggerating reports, and from publishing claims without full knowledge of the facts behind them. He also urged those disseminating information to back up their claims with concrete proof before publishing commentaries.
According to a spokesman from the UAE police force, the foreign detainees would most likely be deported, and that the UAE nationals would be given the option of hormone therapy if they chose.
However, according to a BBC correspondent, agreeing to hormone treatment would most likely reduce an individual's sentence, putting the term "optional," in question.
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
