Anal examinations as proof of same-sex conduct

Egyptian prosecutors have repeatedly referred men and transgender women accused of “debauchery” to the Justice Ministry’s Forensic Medicine Authority for anal examinations intended to produce evidence of receptive anal sex. The practice is documented from the 2001 Queen Boat prosecutions into the 2020s. A 2024 civil-society submission documented 45 prosecution referrals for forced anal examinations between July 2019 and June 2024, while recent human-rights reporting states that the resulting forensic reports continue to be used against defendants despite the absence of scientific validity.

In 2012, Lebanese public prosecutors ordered forensic anal examinations of men arrested on suspicion of homosexual conduct, and examination results contributed to criminal charges. The Lebanese Order of Physicians condemned the tests as medically and scientifically useless and a form of torture. The practice did not end immediately: the public prosecutor’s 2012 directive still allowed examinations under purported consent and treated refusal as evidence, and later reporting documented continued use or threats of use through 2015.

After two men were arrested in Kwale in 2015, state investigators obtained a magistrate’s order and took them to Makadara General Hospital for forced examinations intended to provide evidence of same-sex conduct. In 2018 the Court of Appeal held that the examinations violated their rights. The judgment recorded the medical objection that anal examination cannot establish whether a person had engaged in the alleged conduct, matching international medical consensus that such tests are scientifically invalid.

Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Justice forensic system maintains a methodology for examining men in sexual-crime investigations that treats several chronic anorectal features as characteristic of systematic receptive male-male intercourse. It instructs examiners to assess sphincter tone by digital examination and lists funnel-shaped or gaping appearance, smoothed folds, sphincter relaxation and mucosal coloration as characteristic changes in “systematic” passive partners. Modern forensic consensus rejects those features as reliable evidence that a person has previously engaged in consensual receptive anal intercourse.

Uzbek law-enforcement authorities have ordered forced anal examinations to obtain supposed evidence for prosecutions under Article 120 of the Criminal Code. A documented 2021 case shows a Tashkent court relying in part on a forensic report that treated superficial tears, smoothed radial folds and weakened sphincter tone as evidence of anal sex. The practice remained current in 2025, when two men in Tashkent were reportedly subjected to non-consensual forensic anal examinations, and a June 2026 multi-organization statement describes involuntary invasive examinations as an ongoing enforcement practice associated with Article 120.