April 4, 2019

IRAN: The Islamic Ruled Nation Publicly Hanged A 31-Year-Old Iranian Man After He Was Found Guilty Of Charges Related To Violations Of Iran’s Anti-Gay Sharia Laws. Celebrities Didn't Say A Word.

The Jerusalem Post
written by Benjamin Weinthal
Saturday January 26, 2019

The Islamic Republic of Iran publicly hanged a 31-year-old Iranian man after he was found guilty of charges related to violations of Iran’s anti-gay laws, according to the state-controlled Iranian Students’ News Agency.

The unidentified man was hanged on January 10 in the southwestern city of Kazeroon based on criminal violations of “lavat-e be onf” – sexual intercourse between two men, as well as kidnapping charges, according to ISNA. Iran’s radical sharia law system prescribes the death penalty for gay sex.

The ISNA reported that the 31-year-old kidnapped two 15-year-olds. The opaque inner workings of Iran’s judicial system create enormous difficulties for journalists and human rights advocates to examine judicial cases.

“The LGBT community in Iran has lived in terror for the last 40 years,” said Alireza Nader, CEO of Washington, DC-based research and advocacy organization New Iran. “Next time Foreign Minister Zarif speaks in Washington, the host and audience should ask him why his regime is one of the top executioner of gays in the world.”

According to a 2008 British WikiLeaks dispatch, Iran’s mullah regime executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“Iran is not only the most dangerous threat to Israel’s security, it is also a champion in the state murder of actual or perceived homosexuals,” said Volker Beck, a German Party Green Party politician and a lecturer at the Center for Studies in Religious Sciences (CERES) at the Ruhr University in Bochum. “It would be desirable for the federal government to make Iran’s human rights violations more of an issue.”

Beck played a key role in bringing about marriage equality in Germany for gays and lesbians.

Germany is slated to appoint a banker, who would work in France, to administer a financial mechanism to bypass US sanctions against Iran’s regime. The EU seeks to circumvent US sanctions against Iran to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal. The United States withdrew from the deal in 2018 because of its alleged deficiencies, including the regime’s destabilizing policies in the Middle East. The US government has highlighted the widespread human rights violations in Iran.

Kazeroon is the capital of Kazeroon County, where the execution of the 31-year-old man was carried out, and is located in Fars Province, Iran. The city has population of 143,869 as of 2017. The ISNA report said “the citizens of Kazeroon expressed satisfaction and thanked the judiciary.” The statement about citizens of Kazeroon could not be independently verified.

In 2016, The Jerusalem Post reported Iran’s regime had executed a gay adolescent that year – the first confirmed execution of someone convicted as a juvenile in the Islamic Republic.

Hassan Afshar, 19, was hanged in Arak Prison in Iran’s Markazi Province on July 18, 2016, after he was convicted of “forced male-to-male anal intercourse” in early 2015.

In 2011, Iran’s regime executed three Iranian men after being found guilty of charges related to homosexuality.

Axel M. Hochrein, a spokesman for the Hirschfeld-Eddy-Stiftung Foundation, which fights to advance the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, told the Post:

“Iran is one of the worst states for the persecution of LGBTI. The state publicly and regularly boasts of the execution of gay men. The ability to influence the Iranian regime regarding inhuman violations of human rights is very limited because of the isolated situation in the country. Therefore, our foundation calls for increased efforts by the international community to help LGBTI people escape and provide safe asylum.”
The Jerusalem Post
written by Benjamin Weinthal
Tuesday February 5, 2019

The most high-profile US ambassador in Europe, Richard Grenell, compared on Saturday the Islamic State's brutality with the execution sprees in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The US ambassador to Germany wrote in the federal republic's largest circulation paper BILD: "The recent press reports, first carried by The Jerusalem Post, that the Iranian regime publicly hanged a 31-year-old man for being gay should be a wake-up call for anyone who supports basic human rights. Politicians, the UN, democratic governments, diplomats, and good people everywhere should speak up – and loudly," adding "Iran’s horrific actions are on par with the brutality and savagery regularly demonstrated by ISIS."

Islamic State has engaged in public executions of gay men, including tossing gay men from buildings.

Iran's mullah regime and the Islamic State despise the LGBT community and both prescribe capital punishment for gays and lesbians.

As of 2016, the LGBT human rights advocacy organization OutRight Action International documented 90 murders carried out by the Islamic State during the period 2014-2016.

According to a 2008 British Wikileaks dispatch, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

Grenell wrote: "This is not the first time the Iranian regime has put a gay man to death with the usual outrageous claims of prostitution, kidnapping, or even pedophilia. And it sadly won’t be the last time they do it either. Barbaric public executions are all too common in a country where consensual homosexual relationships are criminalized and punishable by flogging and death. In Iran, where children as young as nine can be sentenced to death, gay teenagers are publicly hanged in order to terrify and intimidate others from coming out."

He noted, "Being gay is a death sentence in eight countries and criminalized in 70 more. LGBT status or conduct means arrest, imprisonment, and violence for people who are simply dating or falling in love. Governments that are members of the United Nations have an obligation to protect, respect, and uphold the dignity and fundamental freedoms of their people."

The Post first reported in the major media about the Iranian regime's public hanging of a 31-year-old man based on the clerical regime's lethal anti-gay law.

Grenell said in his opinion column: "While a student at Evangel University, a Christian liberal arts college in Missouri, I was taught by biblical scholars that 'all truth is God’s truth, no matter where it is found.' The truth for LGBT people is that we were born gay. Enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the idea that all of us are born free and equal in dignity and rights. People can disagree philosophically about homosexuality, but no person should ever be subject to criminal penalties because they are gay."

He concluded his article noting, "India, Trinidad and Tobago, Angola, and Belize have recently decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual conduct. But there’s still much more work to be done. Reasonable people can help by speaking out when young gay men are publicly hanged in Iran or shot in Chechnya. And government officials must work harder to demand that UN members decriminalize homosexuality."

BBC News published on Jun 8, 2016: In Iran, homosexuality is banned and punishable by execution under its strict code of sharia, or Islamic law. In a country dominated by the religious class, being gay is taboo, and especially among the establishment. One Iranian gay cleric, who conducted gay weddings in secret, was forced to flee the country, and has been threatened with death. BBC Persian's Ali Hamedani reports. Video Journalist: Kelvin Brown

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