— A 40-year-old American man living in Scotland said Monday he’s sorry for posing as a Syrian lesbian blogger who offered vivid accounts of life amid revolt and repression in Damascus, a hoax that has exposed the difficulty of sifting truth from fiction online.
Tom MacMaster said he created the fictional persona of Amina Arraf and the “Gay Girl in Damascus” blog to draw attention to conditions in a Middle East convulsed by change. “I never meant to hurt anyone,” the Edinburgh University grad student wrote Monday in a long apology on the blog. The university said it had suspended MacMaster’s computer privileges while it investigated whether he had breached its rules.
Gay rights activists and bloggers say MacMaster has endangered real people who are trying to tell their stories in authoritarian societies. “He completely stole the limelight of real LGBT bloggers and activists in the Middle East and diverted it in a negative way,” said Dan Littauer of the website Gay Middle East.
Daniel Nassar, the pseudonym of a Syrian man affiliated with Gay Middle East, said MacMaster had put all gay Syrians in danger. “If I was living in a country where I could sue this person because he has damaged me and damaged my cause … then I would,” he said.
The blogs about life as a Syrian-American lesbian grabbed international attention soon after they began in February. Alongside video clips and erotic poems, the writer wrote about a childhood in Virginia, daily life as a gay woman in Damascus, the growing protest movement and hopes for a future Syria freed from “dictators and rule by strong men.”
For readers hungry for news of the uprisings sweeping the Arab world, it was gold dust — a gripping, firsthand account of a country from which most foreign journalists are excluded.
A reporter for The Associated Press, who maintained a monthlong email correspondence with someone claiming to be Arraf, found the persona persuasive. The writer spoke about friends in Damascus, and outlined worries about her father and hopes for the future of her country, and seemed very much like a woman in the midst of the violent change gripping Syria.
In the emails, the person acknowledged fudging some details to protect herself and her family, and painted a harrowing picture of fleeing her home.
An email sent to the blogger’s address Monday was not immediately returned.
