HRW on same-sexers in Iran
http://gaycitynews.com/gcn_530/debatingiran.html Volume 5, Number 30 | July 27 - August 2, 2006 PERSPECTIVE/ INTERNATIONAL
Debating Iran BY SCOTT LONG
Is there a battle over Iran? In Washington and London, yes. Nations
with immense military machines at their disposal argue the merits of
peace and war.
So why do the differences of a few lesbian and gay activists in New
York matter? Because lesbian and gay Iranians are not abstractions,
sheltered from politics—or missiles. Their lives should not be
reduced to the agendas of well-meaning strangers in the West.
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.
Iran is a surveillance society. Homes are raided, phones tapped,
people who look or act differently, detained. Privacy is under siege.
So is dignity: anyone arrested may be tortured.
Iran is a patriarchal society. Families police women’s sexualities:
those who don’t conform face violence and fear.
Iran executes more people than almost any other country in the world.
Consensual homosexual conduct carries the death penalty.
Yet if there is change, it will start inside Iran. Our report won’t
be aimed at audiences in San Francisco or London. The readers that
matter most are Iranian lesbians and gays, who are trying to assess
their risks and options, and Iranian human rights workers campaigning
for basic freedoms. That’s consistent with HRW’s years of work on
Iran, supporting civil society from bloggers to student dissidents.
We want to frame the issues not in terms of “gay rights” but as
struggles for privacy, women’s rights, and an end to executions. In
the process we hope to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
Iranian asylum-seekers with reliable facts.
Reliability matters.
When pictures of two young men hanged in the Iranian city of Mashhad
circulated in July 2005, revulsion rode with them around the world.
Many felt an intense bond with the blindfolded, helpless victims. The
photos brought home the death penalty’s horror. Yet if a picture is
worth a thousand words, it should not substitute for them. The
initial story of a “gay killing” grew complicated; the actual charges
against the boys involved an alleged sexual assault on a 13-year-old.
Complications and slogans sit uneasily together.
Doug Ireland began a campaign in Gay City News to prove that the
Mashhad case was one of consensual homosexual sex, and that the
Ahmadinejad regime was carrying out a “massive pogrom,” an
“intensifying crackdown.” His reporting was deeply irresponsible. His
claims about Mashhad relied entirely on second-hand sources. Ireland
never confirmed those reports. No one has. His main source hasn’t
shared information directly, even with the Persian Gay and Lesbian
Organization. Ireland proclaimed the rape charges “refuted.”
A few Iranian exile groups saw a new audience in Western gays. They
began reporting multiple executions in Iran as gay-related. Ireland
was one of many drawn into Iranian exile politics with little feel
for its complexities. And he leapt ahead even of his secondhand
sources—for instance, suggesting a rape trial in Arak was a trial for
consensual homosexual sex even though voices within Iran clearly
doubted it.
After four men were hanged for unspecified “sexual offenses” in Iran,
Ireland found verbal similarity in the reporting enough to “strongly
suggest” that they were hanged for homosexuality. The men were hanged
for heterosexual rape—two for the rape of girls aged 8 and
10. When I made this clear to Ireland, he never qualified his earlier
claim.
Most disturbingly, when an exile group told Ireland it had hired a
Tehran attorney, Ireland published his name. Working for an illegal
resistance group could bring the man a death sentence. I pointed this
out to Ireland: he called me “holier-than-thou.” When HRW followed up
on the case, we concluded that the man probably never existed.
On July 19, people gathered in more than 20 cities to express their
outrage at injustice. Rage must be tempered by responsibility,
though. That’s all HRW has said throughout this controversy.
If we want to challenge Iran’s government, we need facts. There is
enough proof of torture and repression that we can do without claims
of “pogroms.” If we want to act, we need a goal. That means listening
to Iranian dissidents, straight and gay—such as Akbar Ganji, the
heroic journalist who last week refused to meet with Bush
administration officials because he believes U.S. policy cannot
promote democracy in Iran.
Finally, we need debate. We should discuss the facts and question
where our actions are leading. With war and peace hanging in the
balance, gay and lesbian Iranians’ lives should not be fodder for our
own “battles.”
Long is the director of HRW’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
Rights Project.