Gay men tell U.N. Security Council what it's like living under ISIS rule

On Monday, two men told members of the U.N. Security Council what life is like for a gay person under Islamic State rule in Iraq and Syria.

After the town of Idlib, Syria, was taken over by the Nusra Front, a group linked to al-Qaeda, men suspected of being gay were tortured and executed, Subhi Nahas said. Once ISIS was in charge, gay men were thrown from the roofs of buildings, and those who survived were stoned to death. Nahas said he was "terrified to go out," and wasn't safe in his own home, since his father had found out he was gay. "I bear a scar on my chin as a token of his rage," he explained. Nahas escaped to Turkey, where he was told by a friend that a former classmate from Idlib had joined ISIS and "wanted to kill me, aiming to go to paradise." Today, Nahas lives in the U.S. and works with the Organization for Refuge, Asylum, and Migration.

An Iraqi man named Adnan is not as fortunate. He called into the meeting from an undisclosed location, saying that while he fled from his home, he is not safe. "In my society, being gay means death and when [ISIS] kills gays most people are happy because they think we are evil, and [ISIS] gets good credit for that," he said. Adnan said that ISIS tracks down gay people by looking at the cellphones and Facebook accounts of those they have already captured.

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The meeting was organized by the United States and Chile to show the "brutal attacks" of ISIS militants, Reuters reports. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said this is the first time the U.N. Security Council has discussed LGBT issues. "It is impossible not to take up the struggle for their rights as our own as we have other great human rights struggles," she said. "Today, we take a small but important step in assuming that work. It must not be our last step."