Documentary evidence of anti-gay victimisation by the Tehran regime.
Here are links to articles by Doug Ireland, the US researcher and journalist, on Iran’s homophobic victimisation. These articles have been published in Gay City News and The Advocate.
Journalist, Victim’s Lawyer Attest to Executed Iranian’s Railroading
By: DOUG IRELAND
12/06/2007
State Murder for Sex at 13 in the Islamic Republic
NOTE: This article is an updated version, supplemented by additional reporting, from that first posted on December 6.
The Islamic Republic of Iran murdered Makwan Moloudzadeh, a lad of 21, on the cold morning of December 5. Makwan was dragged at dawn from his jail cell in the Kermanshah Central Prison and hanged in secret within the prison, without the required presence of his lawyer and family, for the so-called “crime” of having had anal sexual relations, which the authorities claimed was rape, with boys of his own age eight years ago, when he was 13.
By: DOUG IRELAND
11/29/2007
Since November 7, a mild-mannered 40-year-old gay Iranian businessman from
Rockville, Maryland has been sitting in jail in the Frederick County,
Maryland Detention Center, housed with common criminals, in the living hell of limbo between the freedom he has known since he came to the United States as a young man 17 years ago and the certain persecution, imprisonment, or worse that will be his fate as a gay man if he is sent back to Iran.
By: DOUG IRELAND
08/09/2007
The theocratic regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Monday, August 6, closed the daily newspaper Shargh for publishing an interview with a poet in exile who edits the magazine of the Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO).
Brutal Raid, Iran Arrests 87, Jails 17
By: DOUG IRELAND
05/24/2007
Iranian authorities staged a brutal and violent May 10 raid on a birthday party in Esfahan which they suspected was a gay gathering, beating the guests and arresting 87 people, including four women, one of whom had a child with her.
By: DOUG IRELAND
05/10/200
The situation of the transgendered in Iran has been the subject of frequent media reports that paint a rosy picture of life for them in the Islamic
Republic, and which characterize Tehran – in a recent description in the
U.K. daily The Guardian – as “the unlikely sex-change capital of the world.”
Brits Ignore Iranian Asylum Bid
By: DOUG IRELAND
04/26/2007
A 35-year-old gay Iranian is on a hunger strike in a U.K. jail to protest a deportation order that will send him back to Iran. Saeed Faraji was arrested by British immigration police on April 20, and is currently being held in Oakington Detention Center in Cambridge.
Iranian President Stumbles at Polls
By: DOUG IRELAND
12/21/2006
Municipal elections in Iran last Friday gave a black eye to hard-line fundamentalist, ultra-homophobic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as his supporters suffered a string of defeats.
By: DOUG IRELAND
11/21/2006
The official Iranian news agency IRNA has reported that a man has been hanged in public in the city of Kermanshah on multiple criminal charges, including “sodomy” (“lavat” in Persian).
Iran: A lesbian torture victim speaks
By: DOUG IRELAND
08/19/2006
Maryam knew she was a lesbian from an early age, but in Iran, being gay is punishable by death. Facing far more than parental disapproval, she was kicked out of school, fired from a job, imprisoned, and tortured, all in an unsuccessful effort to change her sexual orientation. Finally, she escaped to France, where her asylum request was still pending at press time.
Iran: Setting the Record Straight
By DOUG IRELAND
08/03/2006
I’m proud of Gay City News for affording Scott Long, who runs Human Rights Watch’s LGBT desk, a chance last week to criticize this newspaper, and me.
No one should be above constructive criticism-neither the gay press, nor human rights organizations. However, in his op-ed, Long made some rather ugly assertions about me that were either distortions or, at best, casual about the facts. Let me set the record straight on these complicated matters.
By DOUG IRELAND
07/13/2006
A Gay Iranian’s ordeal at the hands of the fundamentalist sex police
The experiences of a 25-year-old gay Iranian from Shiraz are typical of the repression suffered by ordinary gay men there. The young man chose the pseudonym Nima to protect himself.
By DOUG IRELAND
07/06/2006
Activist faces risk that “no physical sign of me will remain”
“I was born in Tehran in 1982,” said Mani. “My childhood was full of life’s ordeals. Until the age of seven, I lived with both my parents. But then my mother separated from us, leaving for the Czech Republic, and I felt lonelier. This made our lives more difficult. It was during the Iran-Iraq
War [1980-88]. My father was a commander at the front and we were living with my father’s new wife.”
Marking A Year Since Iran Hangings
By DOUG IRELAND
06/29/2006
Global protests planned to commemorate executions of two gay youths last
July 19
An appeal has been jointly issued by the militant British gay rights group
OutRage and the Paris-based International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) for worldwide demonstrations on July 19, the first anniversary of the public hanging in Iran of two gay teens, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni.
Iran Hacks Web Sites to Bury Pogrom
By DOUG IRELAND
04/27/2006
Persian, British political groups targeted in Internet sabotage drive web sites of gay Iranian organizations and of groups that support and advocate for gay Iranians were sabotaged and driven off-line last week by hackers for the Tehran regime. They remain off-line as Gay City News goes to press.
Among those sites shut down is the multilingual Web site of the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization-PGLO, Iran’s largest gay group, with 29,000 people on its e-mail list and secretariats in four countries. The PGLO Web site has sections in Persian, English, French, and German, and contains a raft of documentation of the horrors the Islamic Republic of Iran is perpetrating against its gay citizens, including photos of its torture victims and their wounds.
Gay Iranian Deportations On Hold
By: DOUG IRELAND
04/25/2006
The Dutch government last Wednesday backed down on its plan to deport gay asylum-seekers from Iran after a debate in Parliament showed overwhelming opposition to the proposal.
Feminists Brutally Assaulted in Tehran
By DOUG IRELAND
03/16/2006
On International Women’s Day, anti-gay Iranian security forces crush peaceful rights rally. In Tehran on March 8, International Women’s Day, busloads of state security forces brutally attacked a peaceful demonstration of Iranian feminists who had gathered to demand their rights and express their opposition to war and violence.
Gay Iranian Exiles at Risk in Holland
By DOUG IRELAND
03/09/2006
Plan to end freeze on expulsions draws fire; Sweden may follow suit
The freeze was imposed after widespread public protest in the Netherlands and across Europe in the wake of the hanging of two gay teens in Iran last July. Iran’s homophobic campaign includes entrapment, blackmail, arrests, kidnapping, torture, and the executions of a dozen more young gay men since the original two teens were hanged in public.
By DOUG IRELAND
02/09/2006
Living on the streets in Mashad, 21-year-old trans man pleads for help Mekabiz is a 21-year-old, self-described “transsexual man,” from a middle-class family. His father is a retired senior army officer. Rejected by his family for his sexuality and gender identity, arrested, tortured, and thrown into prison-where he was repeatedly gang-raped with the complicity of his jailers-Mekabiz is today homeless and living on the streets of Mashad, but has contact with the city’s underground gay community. In the following interview via Internet-translated from the Persian by Ava of the exiled Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization-Mekabiz tells his tragic story.
By DOUG IRELAND
01/19/2006
Gay exile, 28, now in Pakistan tells of eight-day ordeal after Internet snare
The latest escapee to testify to this anti-gay reign of terror is a
28-year-old man caught up in the government’s extensive Internet entrapment campaign targeting gay men. We’ll call him Sam, and we cannot identify his hometown so that his real identity can be protected.
By DOUG IRELAND
11/24/2005
Man who married his partner, now exiled in Turkey, begs for Western pressure
The lethal anti-gay pogrom in the Islamic Republic of Iran undertaken by recently elected, archconservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to send homosexuals to the gallows.In the latest hangings of gays, the semi-official, ultraconservative daily Kayhan reported on November 13 that two gay men, Mokhtar N., 24, and Ali A., 25, were publicly executed for “penetrative homosexual acts.” The hangings were carried out in the Shahid Bahonar Square in Gorgan, a northern city of some 200,000 people. Human Rights Watch, in denouncing these two new gay executions, said in a statement, “These abuses have created an atmosphere of terror for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people throughout Iran.”
Gay Iranians Press for World Protests
By DOUG IRELAND
10/06/2005
Efforts include an online petition and another demonstration in London
In response to the unfolding anti-gay pogrom in Iran, sweepingly implemented by the recently elected government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gay
Iranians are continuing to call for worldwide protests.
IGLHRC’s Failure to Stand Up to Anti-Gay Iran
By DOUG IRELAND
09/29/2005
The September 23 Washington Blade reprints as a column a press release from Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian
Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), headlined “Standing Up for Gays in Iran.”
By DOUG IRELAND
09/15/2005
Amir is a 22-year-old gay Iranian who was arrested by Iran”s morality police as part of a massive Internet entrapment campaign targeting gays, beaten and tortured while in custody, threatened with death, and lashed 100 times, as the accompanying photos make clear. He escaped from Iran in August, and is now in Turkey, where he awaits a grant of asylum by a gay-friendly country.
Iran and the Death of Gay Activism
By DOUG IRELAND
09/08/2005
The architect of Iran’s lethal anti-gay crackdown, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be in New York City next week, where he will address the
United Nations General Assembly on September 14
By DOUG IRELAND
08/25/2005
Reports of homosexual executions increase, even as sources live in fear
But it has not been possible to confirm these reports with complete certainty because of the climate of fear that prevails in the Islamic Republic of Iran today. The newly elected, reactionary regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has heightened its campaign of repression of gay people since the worldwide protests against the hanging of two gay teens in Mashad on July 19. Iranians-both gay and straight-are afraid to communicate with the outside world on these matters.
Two More Executions Planned in Iran
By DOUG IRELAND
08/18/2005
Two gay men in Arak charged in rape of 22-year-man reported to be a bisexual Arak is a city under the strictest possible conservative religious, political, and military rule because it is the site of Iran’s heavy water plant – heavy water is used in the production of fissionable nuclear material and is crucial to Iran’s attempts to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon.
Iranian Sources Question Rape Charges in Teen Executions
By DOUG IRELAND
08/11/2005
As worldwide protests are taking place against the death penalty and criminalization of homosexuality in Iran in the wake of the hanging of two teenage males in the Iranian city of Mashad, new information is coming in from that country casting doubt on the validity of the rape charges the government there used to justify the death sentences. August 11 has been designated as the day for a series of coordinated demonstrations in France,
Ireland, the United Kingdom and elsewhere to protest the hangings of Ayaz
Marhoni, 18, and Mahmoud Asgari, who was either 16 or 17 according to press reports.
Hangings Awaken Long-Overdue Outrage
BY DOUG IRELAND
07/28/2005
The report on the hanging of two Iranian teenagers for being gay, the controversies surrounding the initial reports, and the way in which the story has evolved illustrate a number of problems that should concern sentient gay and lesbian people here in the U.S.
Gay people in this culture are not exempt from the self-centeredness of the society in which they live. As a result, our national gay institutions-like
the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force-as a general rule pay so little attention to events touching gay people outside our borders that they have little experience or background in evaluating, reporting on, or mobilizing around such issues.