Doug Ireland’s interview with this 22-year-old Iranian now in Turkey awaiting to be granted asylum by a gay-friendly country is chilling. Egregious human rights abuses are being committed against gays in this country. This is just an excerpt of the entrapment, torture, and surveillance Amir has had to suffer at the hands of the Iranian government:
“They would arrest me all the time, take me in for questioning in the middle of the day — when I left the house, they’d hassle me, ask me if I was going to go looking for dick, and tell me not to leave my house and to keep off the streets.In one of these arrests, Colonel Javanmardi told me that if they catch me again that I would be put to death, ‘just like the boys in Mashad.’ He said it just like that, very simply, very explicitly. He didn’t mince his words. We all know that the boys who were hanged in Mashad were gay — the rape charges against them were trumped up, just like the charges of theft and kidnapping against them. When you get arrested, you are forced by beatings, torture, and threats to confess to crimes you didn’t commit. It happens all the time, it happened to friends of mine.”
Related
More Horror from Iran [tr]
REPORT: Gay Youths Hanged in Iran [tr]
New Info on Hangings in Iran [tr]
