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Enemy of My Enemy Watch

By Uncle Pavian

Roozonline has discouraging news for the "So what? They hate George Bush, too" wing of the Gay Pride movement:

In reality, 2007 was one of the hardest years for Iranian homosexuals. According to Amnesty ?International, Iran had the highest number of execution of homosexuals in that year. Several ?cases of executions of homosexuals were cited in cities such as Shiraz, Esfahan, Tehran, Rasht, ?Ahwaz, Tabriz, Kermanshah and Mashhad. ?

According to reports, the harshest treatments of homosexuals took place in Isfahan last year. ?Police and security officers in Isfahan orchestrated widespread raids on homosexuals on two ?occasions, in spring and winter, arresting and torturing a great number of suspected ?homosexuals. First, in May of 2007, 83 homosexuals were arrested in one day at a private ?gathering and, after being transported to the "Dastgerd" prison in Esfahan and tortured, 33 of ?them were summoned for further criminal inquiries. These individuals were tried at branch 114 ?of the Esfahan criminal court and almost all were ordered to pay hefty fines. ?

The second occasion began with a simple birthday party. While 17 young men had gathered in ?one of Esfahan's Armenian neighborhoods to celebrate a friend's birthday, the birthday party was ?interrupted with a police attack. This time, the arrested individuals were transported not to ?Dastgerd prison, but to an Intelligence Ministry detention facility in Esfahan, located on Roudaki ?Avenue. According to an attorney qualified to practice law in Iran, "interrogating and subjecting ?people to severe torture by the Intelligence Minister on suspicion of being a homosexual is ?unprecedented." ?

Furthermore, according to the same attorney, such attack and arrest tactics at private gatherings ?in which even alcoholic drinks are not served have no legal basis in the laws of the Islamic ?Republic. ?

The whole report lives here, including some unexpected information about the availability of sex-change surgery in Iran. Ali Eteraz has more detail on the subject here.
For all we know, Rooz's report may actually be true. It certainly sounds like the kind of thing that brutal dictatorships do, and it's also true that there are Muslim clerics who preach that homosexuals should be killed.
On the other hand, here's what the President of Iran, Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had to say on the subject last year at Columbia University:

The video lives here.
So, we're left with the same problem we had trying to figure out what was going on inside the Soviet Union during the Cold War, relying on dissident and emigré sources to fill in the details of life in a truly evil place.

Full post as published by West Neanderthal Drive on April 20, 2008 (boomark / email).