He knew what they meant: he would be captured, imprisoned, and possibly executed. He was 19 at the time. This is the reality for LGBTQ people in Saudi Arabia under sharia law — a death sentence, a prison sentence, or a life of secrecy and terror. But the details of how the regime hunts down this community can now be revealed: the secret network of officials and religious police who spy on them, the cyber surveillance through government apps and dating apps, the third-party agents who lure them back from abroad, and the doctors who collaborate with the authorities.
Their lives under constant threat. Those lucky enough to escape to Britain can sometimes then face sexual harassment in asylum centres. To stay alive would mean having to give all his savings to a government official in the hope that his file in Saudia Arabia would be wiped. To cope psychologically would mean having to become the man he knew himself to be in a country where trans people are prosecuted under the same laws against crossdressing and homosexuality used against gay people.
It would mean secretly injecting himself with black market testosterone, concealing the changes to his face, voice, and body under a niqab, leaving his family without a word, and risking his life in one final attempt to flee the country. Together, they offer an extraordinary insight into a community so hidden and threatened as to exist almost entirely underground. This is not what the Saudi government wishes to convey to the West.
As the only country left bidding for the World Cup , the regime is embarking on a mass public relations campaign to encourage investment and tourism.
Saudi nationals and residents, meanwhile, are being investigated. Tala Safw an , an Egyptian social media influencer with five million followers on TikTok living in Riyadh, was arrested last year after posting a video deemed to have lesbian undertones. Suhail Al-Jamee l was imprisoned and reportedly lashed times after posting a picture of himself in small, leopard-print shorts on social media.
