"In Iran, We don't have homosexuals...."
It's an old story, but I've been thinking about it a lot this week (for obvious reasons).
From The Nation, August 8, 2005:
"On July 19[, 2005] in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran, two teenagers, Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari, were put to death for a crime involving homosexual intercourse. Asgari, at least, was underage at the time of the offense. Before the execution Marhoni and Asgari were detained for approximately fourteen months and received 228 lashes each for drinking, disturbing the peace and theft. Despite appeals from the defendants' lawyers and protests by Iranian human rights activists such as Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld the verdict and sentence, which was carried out by public hanging."
The story of the actual executions was apparently broken by the Iranian Students' News Agency, which claimed that the "crime" committed was consensual gay sex between the boys and another minor. The official government line is that the boys were killed for "disrupting public order among other things." It was this execution which prompted a question about gays in Iran during a Q&A with President Ahmadinejad at Columbia University last week.
From The Nation, August 8, 2005:
"On July 19[, 2005] in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran, two teenagers, Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari, were put to death for a crime involving homosexual intercourse. Asgari, at least, was underage at the time of the offense. Before the execution Marhoni and Asgari were detained for approximately fourteen months and received 228 lashes each for drinking, disturbing the peace and theft. Despite appeals from the defendants' lawyers and protests by Iranian human rights activists such as Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld the verdict and sentence, which was carried out by public hanging."
The story of the actual executions was apparently broken by the Iranian Students' News Agency, which claimed that the "crime" committed was consensual gay sex between the boys and another minor. The official government line is that the boys were killed for "disrupting public order among other things." It was this execution which prompted a question about gays in Iran during a Q&A with President Ahmadinejad at Columbia University last week.
Labels: Politics
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