Iranian Gays Absent From Human Rights Report

mahmouda.jpg
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would approve.

The Iranian president became an international laughing stock last year after claiming Iran doesn’t have gays like the Western world. And, according to a Human Rights Watch report, he’s right!

Michael Petrelis passes on word that gays, queers and other so-called deviants make nary an appearance in HRW’s last four reports on the Middle Eastern nation. Of course, we all know Iran’s got some homos, because we sporadically hear accounts of public executions. The government deems these people sexual criminals, often claiming they abused a teenage boy or another despicable act.

Many activists see this as a not-so-subtle code for queer, but the hazy boundaries of these deaths may explain HRW’s hesitancy. As the non-profit’s Scott Long wrote in 2006:

For eight months, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has researched a report on abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Iran, interviewing dozens in Iran and the diaspora, trying to separate fact from rhetoric and rumor. As a prominent Iranian dissident said last week, “We need cases!” – documentation, not speculation.

And, unfortunately, dead bodies don’t count as documentation. If only those dang Iranians kept better records of their monstrosities!

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