Shame on you: Syrians attack internet fake

Syria's already embattled gay community has reacted with dismay that a popular blog supposedly written by a lesbian from Damascus was, in fact, dreamed up by a United States-born academic living in Scotland.

Tom MacMaster, 40, a PhD student from Edinburgh, has apologised for Gay Girl in Damascus, which purported to describe life in the Syrian capital for Amina Abdallah, an openly lesbian 25-year-old.

He said that although the account of Amina Arraf was fictionalised, it described accurately the atmosphere inside Syria for the gay community and pro-democracy activists.

But genuine gay bloggers inside the country said the webpage had damaged Syria's nascent gay rights community and even put activists' lives in danger.

Sami Hamwi, editor of the Syria page of Gay Middle East, said he and friends had taken personal risks to discover the fate of Amina Abdallah, after MacMaster uploaded a post claiming that the blog's author had been seized by the country's feared security forces.

"I have myself started to investigate Amina's arrest. I could have put myself in a grave danger inquiring about a fictitious figure. Shame on you."

Daniel Nassar, a gay man living in Damascus, told the Independent his friends had been affected by the publicity the fake blog received in a country where homosexuality remains controversial. "We were absolutely outraged when it emerged that the blog was made up.

"It has brought so much unwanted negative focus on Syria's LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] community. Every day I see my lesbian and gay friends struggling to lead a double life, this is the last thing they needed. Now we have had Syrian national television picking up on the story and running with it all day."

LGBT bloggers already face severe repression from Syria's Baathist regime.

Gay Middle East editor Dan Littauer said: "They have to deal with open homophobia, honour killings, the threat of losing their job, being ostracised by family and pressure to get married."

MacMaster said he wanted to draw attention to conditions in a Middle East convulsed by change.

As the deceit unspooled, a second blogger known as Paula Brooks, who posted some of the fraudulent Arraf's comments on a lesbian news site, admitted to being a man.

The Washington Post reported that "Brooks" was Bill Graber, 58, a retired US Air Force member. Graber said he set up the Lezgetreal.com site to advance the gay and lesbian cause and felt he would not be taken seriously as a straight man.

The Washington Post said Amina often "flirted" with Brooks with neither man apparently realising that the other was also a man pretending to be a lesbian.

- Independent, AP