GBM News
written by Nathan James
January 20, 2011
From Iran comes a report that two young gay men, Ayub, 20, and Mosleh, 21, are to be put to death by stoning on Friday, for the alleged rape of a third man, filming the act, and adding images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad superimposed into the video. Piranshar security agents charge they discovered the video in the men’s cell phones, and ordered their death as an “example” to other gay men living in the strictly Islamic country. Stoning, which involves burying the condemned prisoner up to the neck, after which rocks are hurled at the prisoner’s head, has been decried as “cruel and inhuman” by the United Nations. Typically, the stones used to carry out the sentence are not large enough to kill the prisoner, but big enough to cause pain. When the prisoner loses consciousness, he or she is then checked for a pulse. If it is determined the prisoner is still alive, the stoning continues, usually rendering the condemned person’s head a bloody pulp before he or she dies from multiple blunt trauma.
Ahmadinejad, a theocratic ruler who presides over a country with one of the worst human-rights records in the world, proclaimed during a visit to Columbia University in New York, “We have no such thing as homosexuality in Iran.” Of Ahmadinejad’s assertion, and the unverifiable charges against the two men, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) said, “People, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender may be arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and convicted on baseless charges. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to know the facts that lie behind convictions.” The condemned men are being held in Orumieh, where the execution will apparently be carried out. The International Committee Against Stoning released a statement decrying “the Islamic regime’s medieval and brutal sentence against these two young men.”
Hossein Alizadeh, a regional coordinator for IGLHRC, noted that “Iran has an impenetrable and opaque criminal justice system that makes knowing what is really happening inside the country impossible. What we do know is that killing is wrong in all its forms, even when committed by the State.” There was no word at this writing if the men had legal representation, or the hour at which Friday’s sentence would be imposed. A spokesman for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the imminent execution of Ayub and Mosleh was “deplorable” but “outside the purview” of US intervention.
No comments:
Post a Comment