(posted to Stop Iran War)
This is the famous memorandum that Human Rights watch issued privately to some other activists before the July 19 Iran demonstrations.
This statement has been circulated a lot but it has been completely distorted in many ways by press reports, particularly in the US-NYC “Gay City News.” I think everyone should read it for themselves and try to judge what it says about the Iranian situation, particularly because it has become the basis for a lot of vicious personal attacks on Scott Long and other activists. Please observe that Human Rights Watch didn’t urge people not to participate in the July 19 anti-Iran demonstrations, just to “think carefully” about their strategies. It also presents a very sober and detailed and objective statement of the facts based on research and presented without hysteria, which I think everybody should see. I think a lot of people will recognize it as very different from the kind of rhetoric used by Doug Ireland and Michael Petrelis and Peter Tatchell and other people, whatever their purposes are.
Zayed
Dear Colleague:
By this time many people I am writing to will have received the calls for July 19 demonstrations to commemorate what are widely identified as the hangings of two “gay” teenagers in Mashhad, Iran last year.
Human Rights Watch has spent the last seven months researching a report on human rights abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Iran. We have amassed a great deal of information about the situation there. We have campaigned against a range of human rights abuses in Iran for decades (for a rundown of some of the other issues we’ve addressed, http://hrw.org/doc?t=mideast&c=iran ). Because some of that information may be useful to you in deciding whether or how to participate in these demonstrations; because HRW has already been cited, not always accurately, in some of the controversies around the demonstrations; and because those controversies are already becoming angry and vituperative, I want to share some of our perspectives on the claims that are now being made about Iran: as well as an explanation of why HRW isn’t endorsing these events.
*FIRST:* The demonstrations revolve around the central claim that the two young men who were hanged in 2005 were “gay,” were lovers, and were hanged for consensual homosexual conduct. This claim is largely based on speculation. Initial accounts in the Farsi-language press inside and outside Iran-most notably a detailed story in the local Mashhad newspaper on the morning before the boys’ execution in 2005-described how they were convicted of the rape, at knifepoint, of a 13-year-old boy. The only reason the claim that the boys were hanged for consensual homosexual relations gained currency in the first place was a mistranslation of the initial press report dealing with the alleged rape. (See below for details.)
The mistranslation was circulated round the world, then refuted. I am afraid that while various parties have let their reputations hang on “proving” the consequent story of consensual relations, no direct evidence has been introduced which substantively supports it. (The best single account of how the story of “gay hangings” story achieved currency remains Richard Kim’s, at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050815/kim).
From the beginning, HRW has said that:
– It is impossible to reach a final conclusion about the criminal trial in Mashhad, given the opacity of the Iranian justice system and the authoritarian system in general, media censorship included.
– The preponderance of evidence suggested that the youth were tried on allegations of rape, with the suggestion that they were tried for consensual homosexual conduct seemingly based almost entirely on mistranslations and on cursory news reporting magnified by the Western press.
– There is no basis for imputing a Westernized “gay” identity to these youths. We have no idea what their behavior was or how they would have identified themselves, given the complexities around identity and sexuality in Iran.
We have also stressed that:
– The sentence passed on the youths violated human rights in multiple ways. It deserved the strongest condemnation. (See our letter to the head of Iran’s judiciary about the case, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/07/27/iran11487.htm.)
– One case should not be used as a barometer to judge the level of legal repression of homosexual conduct.
– In Iran, it can be documented that such conduct incurs both torture and the death penalty. Meaning, among other things, that no LGBT-identified Iranian asylum seeker should be sent back there.
(More information about all these issues can be found immediately following this message.)
A period of several months followed, after the publicity given Mashhad, during which Iranian (non-LGBT!) diasporic organizations were desperately trying to identify virtually every single execution that happened in Iran as gay-related. The reason was simple: they suddenly had a naive but attentive audience which would pay attention to information about human rights abuses in Iran.
Some reporters-particular Doug Ireland-seized uncritically on these stories and painted a picture of a “intensifying reign of terror” or “pogrom” against gay men going on in Iran. None of these cases were ever proven to involve consensual sex; most clearly did not. Some of them clearly involved *heterosexual* rape! While Doug Ireland and others are claiming that the Ahmedinejad regime is carrying out a massive crackdown on gays, there is no evidence for this. The evidence suggests a steady pattern of police repression over at least a decade, but assertions that a “pogrom” is now going on are unfounded in fact.
Why do these details matter, if repression in Iran is real?
Because crying wolf is a bad strategy for achieving change. Because if human rights advocates don’t deal in facts instead of speculation, they lose all credibility in future crises. Because (as explained below) these misrepresentations actually work against the interests of Iranian asylum-seekers abroad who need real support for their cases, not unproveable claims. Because a whole campaign of demonstrations predicated on a single murky case could actually play into the hands of the Iranian government if these claims are proven wrong.
Finally, I am deeply disturbed by the apparent indifference of many people to the alleged rape of a 13-year old. Nothing justifies torture and the death penalty. They are utterly unacceptable punishments for any crime. Still, many advocates around the Mashhad case disagree with this–or feel they cannot condemn the treatment of the two executed youths unless they were “gay” in a Western sense, and demonstrably “innocent.” Some campaigners as a result simply dismiss the possibility of violent sexual assault against another child. This is not a matter to be passed over lightly.
*SECOND*: The tactics and rhetoric of the organizers behind the demonstrations have often been, from my perspective, problematic or even misleading. I have, I should say, great respect for Doug Ireland’s reporting in the past. Over the last year, he has conducted individual interviews with Iranian survivors of torture and abuse which are authentic and compelling. However, he has also constructed charges of an ongoing “pogrom” in Iran out of virtually no evidence. He has misidentified multiple cases as “gay killings” on little or no basis whatever. His rhetoric has gotten wide coverage, but it is not responsible reporting.
Recipients of this e-mail in the US will probably know Michael Petrelis, another key organizer of the campaign; those outside the US may not. To call him a controversial figure in the gay movement would be an understatement. Over the past few years-for example-he has repeatedly allied with right-wing conservative members of Congress in urging them to defund HIV/AIDS organizations that engage in programming for gay people which he regards as “obscene.” I am not sure how he got involved with the issue of sexual orientation in Iran, but one could hardly say that his central role inspires confidence in the agenda.
Over the weekend, judging by the listserve and e-mail traffic I’ve seen, attacks on people who raise any questions about the demonstrations have taken on an increasingly personal, bullying, and vituperative tone. Organizers have called dissidents “childish,” “jejune,” and “liars”; it’s been suggested that they are “sectarian apologists for the Islamic Republic of Iran.” (I hope I don’t need to comment on the level of menace contained in throwing that language at a person of color in the US in 2006.) While the organizers have claimed they are open to different agendas for the demonstrations, organizers have also suggested that “There is something seriously wrong with someone” who voices opposition to the death penalty while questioning the various versions surrounding the Mashhad case. Human Rights Watch doesn’t propose to associate itself with these verbal assaults.
In fact, it’s entirely legitimate to ask of these demonstrations-as of any demonstration-whom they are targeting and what they are meant to achieve. Publicity is not, in itself, a strategy. Anybody who watches the news knows this is a particularly sensitive moment in US and European relations with Iran. US pressure on the Ahmedinejad regime has mainly succeeded in making it enormously popular internally (popularity which anecdotal accounts suggest it may actually be reluctant to endanger at the moment by expanding intrusive morals policing). Questions about the facts aside, I would feel more confident about the call for demonstrations if I saw signs that the principal organizers in the US and UK acknowledged this context, or had a clearer sense of how to change, not just challenge, Iranian policy and law.
HRW has been working closely for months now with the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO), a group of largely diasporic LGBT-identified Iranians providing support for asylum-seekers and increasingly trying to advocate for change. Our organizations don’t agree on everything-nor would Human Rights Watch, unlike some others, claim to speak for them–but they are incredible and invaluable and have helped us document other serious and ongoing abuses. I urge everyone to support them, and I look forward to their speaking out with a completely independent voice on these issues. We are considering convening a meeting of activists and groups involved with the Iranian situation, possibly in Toronto after our report is launched, to plan an intelligible course of action and advocacy for the future. What is desperately needed now, it seems clear to me, is coherent thinking about strategy.
*THIRD*: For the organizers of the July 19 demonstrations, changing Western countries’ asylum policies with regard to LGBT Iranian refugees is a key demand. We agree. Those policies are brutal. All the worst features of refugee policies with regard to sexuality–an inability to understand the complexities of identity, an incomprehension of the closet, a colluding complicity with the social imposition of secrecy-come to the fore, coupled with the post 9/11 mistrust of any and all immigrants from the Muslim world.
Jessica Stern and I have written over 50 affidavits for Iranian asylum-seekers persecuted on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity, in over a dozen countries, since last November. We’ve listened to terrifying and moving stories. And we want to make clear that the single-minded focus of many advocates on the Mashhad case does not help asylum-seekers. It pins their fates and lives on a single undetermined case, rather than on an analysis of the overall situation in Iran. An unfortunate side-effect of the whole media firestorm has been that, in the eyes of governments, “proving” what happened in Mashhad has become the linchpin for determining states’ obligations to asylum-seekers–instead of examining Iran’s overall and provable record on sexual orientation as well as other issues, and instead of looking at host countries’ absolute obligation not to return people to torture.
Most people need no reminder of the photographs that were circulated showing last year’s execution in Mashhad. The pictures show with heartrending intensity the enormity of executing those youths. Yet in such a murky case the reasons for mourning will differ according to people’s interpretations of the facts–whether they think the youths were “gay,” whether they see them as victims of torture, whether they condemn the execution of minors or the death penalty in general. I do wonder somewhat at the sense I get from some that their sympathies will be shut off if the youths can’t be identified, in a way that they can mirror or share, as “gay.” I also wonder at the apparent reluctance to listen seriously to women’s rights campaigners (in Iran and elsewhere) who might have something to say about the very real prevalence of rape in a highly patriarchal and often-violent country; or to listen to children’s rights campaigners, who might have something to say about taking lightly charges of sexual abuse against children.
I’m not a position to make a final statement about that case, or to offer any conclusive recommendation about what people should do. HRW is going to concentrate on releasing its report on abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Iran, and on advocating around it. We will not be participating in these demonstrations: they’re predicated on speculations too broad and representations too inpugnable for us to join. However, on HRW’s behalf I simply urge that people think carefully about the expressed agendas of the proposed demonstrations, evaluate the facts–and try to consider what an effective strategy for changing the ongoing violence in Iran might actually entail.
Finally, I would ask this note not be posted to listserves. Precisely for the sake of asylum-seekers’ cases, we are trying to keep the questions about this from exploding into the public eye, where it could do further damage to refugees’ prospects.
I am happy to answer questions at any time. Following are some further details about the Mashhad case, for those who are interested.
Sincerely,
Scott Long
Director
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program
Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, NY USA 10118
Tel. +01 (212) 216-1297
Fax +01 (212) 216-1876
E-mail: mailto:longs@hrw.org
* * * * * * * * * * *
“Un pajaro de papel en el pecho
Dice que el tiempo de los besos no ha llegado.”
–Vicente Aleixandre
MORE DETAILS ABOUT MASHHAD
The one fact we-and the world– knows for certain is that two youths in their late teens were executed in the Iranian city of Mashhad on July 19,2005. The *initial* reports that the youth were being executed for “being gay” came down to the translation of a report on the Farsi-language ISNA website. This article was dated July 19–thus presumably posted immediately after the executions– and referred in the 3rd paragraph to their crime only as “lavat” (“sodomy,” from the Quranic story of Lot). This was the part that was translated and rapidly circulated in the Western media.
However: both the headline and the lead to the article actually described the crime as “lavat beh onf”–sodomy by coercion. “Onf” is an archaic term and the article doesn’t use the colloquial term for rape, but Iranian legal sources, and even the people in the West who were orginally circulating an account of the crime as solely “lavat,” agree that this is a term of art for rape (of a male by a male).
Meanwhile, Quds daily, a local Mashhad newspaper, on the morning of July 19–even before the executions–contained a detailed account, apparently based largely on court papers, of their alleged crime, which was the rape at knifepoint of a 13- year-old boy.
Because this information was circulated only later, after the initial account of executions for “sodomy” had gone round the globe, the appearance was created that the Iranian government was in some way trying to replace an “original” report of an execution for consensual “sodomy” with a smokescreen story of a rape. In fact, the chronology was the opposite, though–the rape story came first, then became, particularly in the West, a story of execution for “homosexuality.”
This said, and this is important to stress, *even if* the charge was rape–and even if the proceedings, which were held in camera and about which we hence know nothing substantive, could be considered to have “proven” it–nothing can justify the execution of people for offenses committed while minors (or, in our view, the death penalty itself), the torture they underwent (228 lashes) or the ferocious public character of the executions. Professor Anna Enayat of St Antony’s College, Oxford has documented a number of the peculiarities of the case in comparison to other alleged rape cases in Iran–the masked executioners, the unusual interview on the way to the gallows–which suggest that the youth were executed in part as a symbolic gesture. As professor Enayat has communicated to us, though, this doesn’t necessarily mean the symbolic gesture was directed at homosexual conduct per se. More likely, it was meant to show how severely the regime planned to treat moral offenses in general.
However, one reason for our persistent skepticism about the subsequent attempts to prove a) that the youths were “gay,” b) that they were executed for it, has to do with this chronology. Several committed themselves to this version at the start; found that essentially all the reasons they had endorsed it disappeared when one looked closely at the media reports; and then, it would appear, started to search, retrospectively, for other evidence to support the claims they’d already made. Neither HRW nor anyone else can say authoritatively that they are wrong or right in continuing to make those claims. We can only say that we are still skeptical.
The main evidence subsequently introduced for the claim that the youth were gay comes from Afdhere Jama, the editor of Huriyah. According to Afdhere, three sources inside Mashhad have told him that they saw the two youths, in the summer of 2003, together at a gay party in Mashhad.
I have the greatest respect for Afdhere and absolutely no reason to doubt anything he says. However, his sources have refused to speak to anyone else, including human rights investigators. From a professional standpoint HRW simply can’t adduce a second- or third-hand account as evidence. Moreover, even if we did, it would not prove that (as one writer says) they were “lovers, not rapists.” It wouldn’t bear on the rape “charge” at all; it wouldn’t even necessarily prove that they were lovers. It would prove that they were at a party.
The other key argument is the claim that Iranian authorities, in cases of lavat or consensual “sodomy,” routinely add on additional charges of rape or other crimes, extracting “confessions” to these offenses by torture if necessary.
This claim has largely arisen since the Mashhad executions. Given what we have already described as the opacity of the Iranian justice system–and its many documented irregularities and persistent corruption–it is entirely possible. I want, though, to run through some of the reasons that have been offered for why the Iranian authorities might do this.
a) It’s claimed that the Iranian authorities have learned that executing or torturing people for homosexual conduct will incur criticism from the West (in particular)and so they want to conceal the fact. This doesn’t make sense to me. The regime has shown itself fairly shameless and insusceptible to pressure in persecuting political dissidents and ethnic and religious minorities, all of whom have considerable constituencies of supporters both inside and outside the country. I don’t see why they should be particularly embarassed about executing people “guilty” of same-sex relations–who don’t enjoy such strong or wide support.
b) It’s claimed that Iranian authorities want to discredit “gays” (and presumably lesbians, though they tend to be left out of these arguments altogether) by smearing them with additional offenses. This also does not make a lot of sense to me. In the regime’s intensely moralistic view, as well as in a society which everyone agrees is intensely patriarchal and overtly homophobic, the accusation of homosexual conduct should be smear enough–it is probably worse than rape in many (not just religious) eyes. (Nor is it evident why they should single out homosexual conduct as requiring added opprobrium. But so far as I know, no one has claimed the regime is at pains to burden e.g. adulterers with additional charges to secure their complete discredit.) To the contrary: the Quranic and social contempt for homosexuality seems sufficiently great that I’m somewhat surprised the government doesn’t use lavat (as Ceausescu used sodomy charges in old Romania) as a smear to discredit political opponents.
c) It’s claimed that the authorities need to throw on additional charges because charges of lavat are hard to prove. This also doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense to me.
-First, the claim is predicated on the fact that most sexual offenses in Iranian shari’a require evidence from four witnesses to prove: but for sodomy, as for many other such offenses, the “knowledge of the judge” (in practice, circumstantial evidence) can substitute, giving extremely easy scope for convictions.
-Second, this might explain why prosecutors would add on non-sexual offenses which have a lower standard of proof; not why they would add charges of rape which also require, *in principle*, four witnesses.
-Finally, if you can torture people into confessing to something else such as rape (as you undoubtedly can), you can torture them into confessing to lavat.
d) It’s claimed that the legal system itself encourages rape charges in cases of lavat. This could take several forms: for instance, a participant in consensual homosexual sex may be encouraged to claim rape in order, as a “victim,” to escape punishment which otherwise would strike both partners. Or prosecutors or judges may simply refuse to believe that (in particular) a passive partner would voluntarily incur the “shame,” and may simply assume one would only submit to it by force. This argument seems to me entirely believable. I say this based also my experience elsewhere in the region (e.g. Egypt) and in other countries where sodomy laws give rise to extortion and dire misrepresentation.
The problem is that, while as we say this adding-on of charges seems plausible (particularly for reason d), it is being presented as a proven fact–and so far as we know no one has yet shown a single case where it can be demonstrated as such. We haven’t even seen instances where family members or other people close to the case come forward to make the assertion publicly. The plausibility of argument d) should certainly give rise to questions about cases where lavat is coupled with a rape charge–though hardly enough to say anyone should throw out an alleged rape victim’s testimony. But we cannot say without further evidence that it is a fact of Iranian practice.
Unfortunately, in the months after the publicity around Mashhad, a few *non-LGBT* diasporic Iranian organizations started repeatedly reporting executions as having been for consensual lavat. Most of these, so far as we can make out, weren’t. Iran has one of the highest rates of execution in the world. (Many of these are for drug-related offenses.) There was a spike in executions in 2005 even before Ahmedinejad took office. The sudden attention to one particular death-penalty case seemed to give exile groups an opportunity and an audience for talking about the crisis of the death penalty in Iran, which few people had paid much attention to before. But in the process almost any execution for any sexual (or other) offense seemed to be capable of being called a “gay killing.” In some of these cases there was absolutely no reason to suppose they had anything to do with homosexual conduct. For instance, Iran Focus reported in September that “Four young men between the ages of 17 and 23 were hanged in public in the port city of Bandar Abbas http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3443.” Without researching the cases further, Doug Ireland immediately added these to his roster of likely gay cases. In fact two of the men were convicted of breaking into a house for robbery and of raping a woman; and the other two allegedly raped three young girls, 10, 7, and 8 years old. Both HRW and IGLHRC did a statement on one case in Gorgan, in late 2005, where the first Iranian press reports indeed suggested that the executed men had a history of rape and violence, but seemed to distinguish this from the offense that led to their execution. However, the Persian Lesbian and Gay Organization subsequently indicated to us that in their view this was probably a case of rape.
I should add that most of the gay-identified men (in particular) whom we asked about the Mashhad case during HRW’s research said they believed the men had been hanged for consensual homosexual conduct. This is not to be taken lightly. However, none of them had direct knowledge of the case and I don’t discount the possibility that they reached this conclusion largely based on the emotional response in the Western media. I should also note that Iran is extremely rich in rumor and conspiracy theory. Ervand Abrahamian has an excellent chapter on this in his collection of essays “Khomeinism,” and more and more I feel this should be required reading for anyone trying to negotiate a way through what Dilip Hiro calls the Iranian labyrinth.
What we can say is that, regardless of these recent cases, our research shows clearly that executions for consensual “sodomy”, tried as such, do take place and are a serious human rights issue. Surveillance and detentions by regular police, basiji (religious police), and other religious parapolice, are common. People are detained regularly, in raids on private homes and on cruising areas and as a result of other forms of surveillance, including internet entrapment and phone wiretaps. When they are arrested they are tortured–flat-out, without exception. Sometimes the torture is the result of a criminal sentence (usually floggings); sometimes they are beaten severely or sexually abused in pre-trial detention. Women whose sexualities do not conform to heterosexual norms face domestic violence, forced marriage, forced psychiatric and medical treatment, and other abuses.
I must also stress yet again that the existence of the death penalty for homosexual conduct, and the widespread practice of torture, mean that governments have an *absolute* obligation under international law not to refoul people back to Iran where they might face those penalties.