Gay rights advocates will hold protest rallies and vigils in at least 20 cities in North America and Europe, including Vancouver, on July 19 to condemn what they say is the harsh and cruel treatment of gays in Iran.
The events, which are being billed as an "International Day of Action Against Homophobic Persecution in Iran," are set to take place on the first anniversary of the hanging executions of two teenage males in the Iranian city of Mashad.
"In recent years, public executions for consensual gay sex have been rarer than in the past, apparently because the regime does not want to draw attention to its failure to eradicate same-sex behavior in the ‘Islamic paradise’ of Iran," said Peter Tatchell, founder and coordinator of OutRage and a lead organizer of the July 19 protest.
The teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were reportedly hanged after they were found guilty of a serious sexual assault charge, some human rights groups said.
Since that time, gay rights groups in Europe have joined the Persian Gay & Lesbian Organization, which represents gay Iranian exiles, in citing new evidence they claim shows Iranian authorities falsely accused the two teens.
Photographs of the July 19, 2005, hangings of Asgari and Marhoni circulated widely on the Internet, drawing expressions of outrage from gay activists and human rights organizations.
Tatchell and other activists have reported that as many as 14 gay men have been executed in Iran in the year following the executions of Asgari and Marhoni. All had been charged with committing rape and other crimes.
"By instituting charges of kidnap and rape, the Iranian authorities apparently hope to discredit the victims, discourage public protests and deflect international condemnation," Tatchell said.
Other cities scheduled to hold protests include Fort Lauderdale; Provincetown, Massachusetts.; San Diego; San Francisco; Sacramento; Toronto; Amsterdam; London; Stockholm; Marseilles; Moscow; Brussels; Mexico City; Warsaw; Frankfort; Berlin; and Vienna.
Gay Iranian exile leaders say they believe Asgari and Marhoni were 17 at the time they were executed and possibly 15 or 16 at the time they were arrested one year earlier.
Some gay activists claimed the hangings highlighted a long history of anti-gay persecution in Iran since Islamic radicals took control of the country in 1979.
But the actual motive for the hangings remains unclear, and three human rights groups, including the U.S.-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, said they received reports that the two youths were executed not for being gay but for raping a male minor.
While IGLHRC, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said they condemned Iran’s use of capital punishment against juveniles, the three organizations cautioned gays not to view the incident as necessarily anti-gay.
Tatchell said gays inside Iran told his group that Asgari and Ayaz were arrested after the parents of one of them turned them in to authorities.
Arsham Parsi, the PGLO’s human rights secretary who lives in Toronto, said in an interview recently that unnamed sources in Iran, including an underground Iranian gay group, have estimated that 4,000 gays have been executed in Iran because of their sexual orientation between 1979, when the current regime took power, and 2000. There was no way to independently verify those numbers.
