Afghanistan: While Pedophilia Is Culturally Sanctioned, LGBT Adults Fear for Their Lives, by Edwin Mora.

Homosexuals in Afghanistan are forced to live in fear and secrecy to avoid being kidnapped, robbed, beaten up, blackmailed, arbitrarily arrested in what police describe as “honey traps,” and murdered by relatives in “honor killings,” reports the Associated Press (AP), citing first-hand accounts by various Afghan gay men.

Nevertheless, the prevalent sexual abuse of young boys by powerful men in Afghanistan, an ancient Afghan custom known as bacha bazi (“playing with boys”), is culturally sanctioned.

Under the Taliban regime, the practice had been considered a capital offense, punishable by death. However, the practice has been “resurrected” since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 overthrew the terrorist group’s regime …

Current law dictates that bacha bazi perpetrators could be executed, but only if the boy dies.

“Yet the ‘bacha bazi,’ as the sponsors are known, are rarely punished for the years of abuse they commit against the dancing boys, and it is not unusual to see older men in public with their young sex slaves,” reveals AP.

“While the boys themselves can carry the stigma of their [bacha bazi] days throughout their lives, their sponsors, most of them married with children, are not regarded as homosexual, and their actions are often justified with the saying ‘women are for children, boys are for fun,’” adds the news service.