Death threats non-stop for Iraqi male beauty pageant contestant
Wahab Hasso, a Netherlands-based Iraqi beauty pageants contestant.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) An Iraqi male beauty pageants contestant says death threats continue to him and his family over his activity, to which religiously-driven contempt left a number of peers dead.
Wahab Hasso, 23, a Yazidi who lived in the Netherlands as a refugee since 2012, and a finalist at two earlier pageants, told Sputnik website he secretly walked out of a 2017 contest in the Netherlands after receiving death threats for his Iraq-based family via angry facebook commentators.
He said threats to his family began in 2017, right after the assassination of Karar Noshi, a young Iraqi artist and a social network celebrity known for his flamboyant style.
He revealed that the most recent threats were received after the assassination of Iraqi female pageants star, Tara Fares, who was filmed by a security camera being shot dead in her car by an attacker.
Hesso vowed to take part in upcoming pageant in the Netherlands in response to the assassination of Hammoudi al-Meteiry, a 15-year-old boy, famous as “the King of Instagram” who was found dead with stabs in Baghdad earlier this month after his unknown killers doubted his “sexual orientations”.
Iraq, since August, has witnessed assassinations of several social celebrities, including, most recently, Tara Fares, a second-ranking for “Miss Iraq” pageant, as well as cosmetics experts and rights activists, incidents which won condemnation by the United Nations.