Incredibly sad story (WARNING contains video link that some may find distressing)

[Nick80]

I came across this on youtube yesterday under "most viewed". It makes me sick to my stomach that things like this happen all the time. I hate the world sometimes. http://www.hipforums.com/forums/images/smilies/sad.gif



One July In Mashad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dgsZYA1mPY)

[warmhandedcanadian]

that is indeed sad, however it is a good reflection of how their society punishes many "offenses" seen as sins..... many of which make little or no sense.

[Nick80]

It's just so depressing to see them sobbing with cameras rammed in their faces, and to see how young they were when this happened. I know things like this occur a lot in some parts of the world, but knowing it is different from putting faces to it. I can only imagine what they must have gone through for the year leading up to their murders.

[warmhandedcanadian]

yep. sad.

[amp7325]

That's terrible. :( That's the type of thing that makes me glad that I live somewhere like the United States. I mean even though the government here has problems and stuff like that, and many people would argue that it's oppressive, we can't deny that we have it so much better than elsewhere. It's astounding how much we take for granted.

Too bad they picked such a bad song for the background music.

[J0hn]

This was a shocking video. In terms of religion, not just Islam, there needs to be tolerance.

[teenagemutantninjatu]

Wow, shouldn't have done that huh? A lot of you are lucky you don't live in that part of the world.

My question would be what made them do that? Was it the internet? Huh? Was it?

[Samhain]

thats terrible, i am incredably lucky that I live in a country where homosexuality is legal.

BTW Remember next time to add a warning on the thread title, that some people may find it distressing
S

[warmhandedcanadian]

good point.

[Folkhippie90]

It wont work on my computer. Sounds terrible, judging by your reactions :(

[Panzer]

I actualy feel phisicaly ill like I might vomit after watching that.

[Nick80]

BTW Remember next time to add a warning on the thread title, that some people may find it distressing
SI'm sorry. I thought my description was enough, but I guess a warning in the title would've made more sense. :blush:

I'll remember for the future.

[txbarefooter]

a quick internet search show the story is wrong. according to the ILGa, International Lesbian Gay Association, the two (18 & 19) were accused of raping a 13 year old boy.

here is the story.

The two male teenagers hanged in Mashad, Iran, July 19 were executed not for having sex with each other, as has been reported, but for raping a 13-year-old boy, Human Rights Watch is claiming.

The New York Times and the Times of London separately reported the same thing.

Mahmoud Asgari, 18, and Ayaz Marhoni, 19, allegedly raped the boy at least 14 months prior to their executions, meaning at least one, and perhaps both, of them were minors at the time.

Note from ILGAOn this case, apart from this article below, please also read an interview of an Iranian LGBT activist and the statement from other ILGA members IGLHRC, Outrage and COC.

According to Scott Long, director of HRW's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Project: "On the morning of July 19 -- that is, just before the executions -- a long article in Quds, a Farsi daily published in Mashad, described the case. It is clearly identified there as a rape case, with a lengthy interview with the father of the 13-year-old apparent victim. The account there is that the case dates back two years, that the boy in
question was seized outside a shopping area by the two boys ultimately convicted, who took him to a deserted area where five other boys were also waiting. (It's not clear what happened to the five other members of what is described as a gang.) He was gang-raped at knifepoint, according to his father's account, which is supported by three passersby who interrupted the
act. Passersby were attacked with knives and had their cars vandalized."

It also now seems that an article from the Iranian Students News Agency, translated and circulated by the London gay group OutRage!, was not the first article about this case, as OutRage! believed, and may not have been translated correctly.

OutRage! had reported that the ISNA article said the boys were executed for consensual gay sex. But HRW says the headline and the first sentence of the article make it clear they were hanged for "sodomy by coercion" ("lavat beh onf"). "Lavat beh onf," HRW said, is an archaic phrase that is not the normal way to refer to rape.

"Ultimately," said HRW's Long, "one has to ask what is the basis for believing that the boys were tried for consensual sodomy. It boils down to an English-language article on the Iran Focus Web site having made no mention of the rape charge. There is no other substantial evidence."

OutRage! continues to disagree. (Historically, both OutRage! and Human Rights Watch have proven to be reliable sources.)

"The ISNA report seen by our contacts in Iran makes no mention of rape or of a 13-year-old boy. It states they were hung for homosexual acts," OutRage! leader Peter Tatchell said this week. "OutRage!'s sources for our reportage of this story include clandestine gay and lesbian activists inside Iran, members of the democratic and left Iranian opposition, and the Web sites of government-sanctioned news agencies in Iran.

"We work with many exiled gay Iranians in London," Tatchell said. "They confirm that smears and torture against gay people are routine in Iran. Whenever the regime wants to deflect criticism, it trumps up charges of alcoholism, adultery, rape and drug abuse against the victims of its brutality.

"OutRage! is aware of other cases in the region where a false claim of rape has been used by parents to spare a family the shame of having a gay son and to save him from imprisonment and/or execution."

Iran's Shariah-law capital offenses include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, adultery, prostitution, treason and espionage, according to Agence France-Presse.

CONCERN IN EUROPE, U.S.

Meanwhile, the European Union Presidency, currently held by the United Kingdom, has denounced the executions.

"The European Union wishes to convey its deep concern over reports of a public execution of two youths in Mashad on 19 July 2005 despite the fact that one of the youths, Mahmoud Asqary, was aged under 18 at both the time of the crime and the execution," the Presidency said.

"The EU recalls its long-held position that capital punishment may not, in any circumstances, be imposed on persons below 18 years of age at the time of the commission of their crime. Such a punishment is in direct contravention of Iran's obligations under the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] and also the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child."

In the U.S., three members of the U.S. House of Representatives have written to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding she get to the bottom of the story.

"We write to express our concerns over the recent execution of two gay teenagers in northeastern Iran," said U.S. Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Tom Lantos, D-Calif. "The exact details of the case remain unclear, and because the conflicting reports about the nature of the charges against the two boys make it difficult to react appropriately, we urge the State Department to do everything it can to clarify the
circumstances of this case.

"Initial reports were that the 16-year-old and 18-year-old boys ... were punished for homosexual activity with each other," the congressmen said. "In other reports, the Iranian authorities claim the teenagers were accused of raping a 13-year-old boy. Some human rights groups suspect that this charge may have been trumped up as an excuse for the brutal treatment of gay
people and to undermine public sympathy for the boys."

The representatives urged Rice to investigate and clarify the facts surrounding the execution of the two teens, "including whether the charges and the conviction were due to their homosexuality, and if they were, [to] issue a strong condemnation of this brutal killing."

They also urged Rice to "condemn Iran for its national policy of persecution of its citizens based on sexual orientation."

Back in Europe, the Netherlands' Immigration and Naturalization Office announced July 28 that it will no longer expel illegal Iranian immigrants who are gay, pending completion of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs study on the situation of gays in Iran.

Is gay life in Iran as dire as some reports on this case suggest?

According to a new interview with the publishers of the Iranian gay magazine MAHA conducted by the Web site GayRussia.ru, it is not.

The magazine is distributed from inside Iran via e-mail in PDF format. (If it were published on the Web or in traditional magazine format, it likely would be blocked or banned by the government.) The magazine has 600 subscribers.

"After eight months of hard work, eight issues and four supplements have appeared, covering issues such as gays and family, depression among GLBT, a report about lesbians in Iran, etc.," the publishers wrote in the e-mail interview. "MAHA also publishes a separate supplement for gay aid and to help GLBT to find a friend. Today MAHA has two editors, one gay and one lesbian, and MAHA's readers are all over the country and even some Iranian GLBT in exile."

The publishers said gays are no longer routinely persecuted in Iran.

"The regime does not systematically persecute gays anymore, there are still some gay Web sites, there are some parks and cinemas where everyone knows that these places are meeting places for gays," they wrote. "Furthermore it is legal in Iran that a transsexual applies for sex change and it is fully accepted by the government.

"There are some media which sometimes -- not often -- write about such issues. Having said that, the Islamic law, according to which gay punishment is death, is still in force, but it is thought [to be] not much followed by the regime nowadays.

"Thanks to the Internet and contact with the international community, people get the info, and Iran society has changed a lot, and support for GLBT rights is growing in Iran, though we still have a long way to go," the publishers said. "On the whole, we are optimistic about the future as Iran's situation cannot continue [as is] and people are pushing for reforms and changes."

Rex Wockner

[Nick80]

I also looked it up before. It could be that the info in the video is incorrect, but from what I found, it seemed like their ages may have been advanced and the rape claim added when human rights groups got involved. One article I read had a quote from some government official saying something to the effect of "stop focusing on their ages, they’re still degenerates" when it came out they were minors. Plus, I also found something about the Petshop Boys dedicating an album to their memory. I don’t think they’d dedicate something to child rapists.



Even the article you posted says:



"We work with many exiled gay Iranians in London," Tatchell said. "They confirm that smears and torture against gay people are routine in Iran. Whenever the regime wants to deflect criticism, it trumps up charges of alcoholism, adultery, rape and drug abuse against the victims of its brutality.



"OutRage! is aware of other cases in the region where a false claim of rape has been used by parents to spare a family the shame of having a gay son and to save him from imprisonment and/or execution."





The only major papers run in Iran are state controlled and will say whatever will make the government look best, (even if it’s at the sake of other people’s reputations). I would love it if we could find out the truth behind this story since there are a lot of contradictions online. I have a feeling that the boys' were smeared by the government. Maybe we can get some magazine to check it out again now that the Iranian government isn’t on the defensive? I'm sure they had friends or family willing to explain what really happened. They may have suffered, but their memories shouldn’t also.

[Nick80]

I found a website with a lot more information. But if the video was too much for you, definitely DO NOT click on the website. It's not an easy thing to read about or to view.

http://www.gayegypt.com/march2006.html

[boek]

Way to piss me off.. what is wrong with people?!

[CrazybutLazy]

"HOLLAND MAY COMMEMORATE NAZI DEATH TRAINS BY DEPORTING GAY MEN TO IRAN."

You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me.

[flyboy5506]

I remember when this happened. There were conflicting reports about what those boys crimes really were. One story is that it was consensual gay sex, and the Iranian government made up the story of the rape later, and the other is that they did indeed rape a younger boy. Either way, the fact remains that consensual homosexuality is illegal in that country. I really hate Iran.

[erzebet1961]

I admit..I had to stop watching BEFORE they were hanged....thats how horrible I found the whole thing....we are so verry fortunate that we , as gays , are able to be who we are in relative safety and comfort here.

[Samhain]

I admit..I had to stop watching BEFORE they were hanged....thats how horrible I found the whole thing....we are so verry fortunate that we , as gays , are able to be who we are in relative safety and comfort here.
here here
S

[Nick80]

Here's another Iranian's story. He was thankfully able to escape, but not until after severe beatings and humiliation.
source (http://www.pglo.net/english/007.htm)


Next Time, You'll Be Executed
A young, gay Iranian torture victim speaks out
By DOUG IRELAND



Photo of Amir after having received 100 lashes at the Intelligence Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Courtesy: Perisan Gay and Lesbian Organization (http://i15.tinypic.com/3yqmdyw.jpg)



Amir is a 22-year-old gay Iranian who was arrested by Iran's morality police as part of a massive Internet entrapment campaign targeting gays, beaten and tortured while in custody, threatened with death, and lashed 100 times, as the accompanying photos make clear. He escaped from Iran in August, and is now in Turkey, where he awaits a grant of asylum by a gay-friendly country. In a two-hour telephone interview from Turkey, Amir-through a native Persian translator-provided a terrifying, first-hand account of the Islamic Republic of Iran's intense and extensive anti-gay crackdown, which swept up Amir and made him its victim. Here is Amir's story. Amir is from Shiraz, a city of more than a million people in southwestern Iran that the Shah tried to make “the Paris of Iran” in the 1960s and 1970s, attracting a not insignificant gay population and making the city a favorite vacation spot for Iranian gays. But, after the 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini, Shiraz was targeted as a symbol of taaghoot, or decadence.

Amir's father was killed by a gas attack in the Iran-Iraq war in 1987, becoming-in the Islamic Republic's official parlance-a “martyr,” whose surviving family thus had the right to special benefits and treatment from the state. Amir, who grew up with his mother, an older brother, and two sisters, said, “I've known I was gay since I was about five or six-I always preferred to play with girls. I had my first sexual experience with a man when I was 13. But nobody in my family knew I was gay.”

Amir's first arrest for being gay occurred two years ago.

“I was at a private gay party, about 25 young people there, all of us close friends,” he recalled. “One of the kids, Ahmed Reza-whose father was a colonel in the intelligence services, and who was known to the police to be gay-snitched on us, and alerted the authorities this private party was going to happen. Ahmed waited until everyone was there, then called the Office for Promotion of Virtue and Prohibition of Vice, headed in Shiraz by Colonel Safaniya, who a few minutes later raided the party. The door opened, and the cops swarmed in, insulting us-screaming 'who's the bottom? Who's the top?' and beating us, led by Colonel Javanmardi. When someone tried to stop them beating up the host of the party, they were hit with pepper spray. One of our party was a transsexual-the cops slapped her face so hard they busted her eardrum and she wound up in hospital. Ahmed Reza, the gay snitch, was identifying everyone as the cops beat us up. The cops took sheets, ripped them up, and blindfolded us, threw us into a van, and took us to a holding cell in Interior Ministry headquarters-they knew us all by name.”


Iranians live in fear of the Interior Ministry, which has a reputation like that of the former Soviet KGB's domestic bureau, and whose prisons strike terror in people 's hearts the way the infamous Lubianka in Moscow did. “I was the third person to be interrogated,” Amir said. “The cops had seized videos taken at the party, in one of which I was reciting a poem. The cops told me to recite it again. 'What poem?' I said. They began beating me in the head and face. When I tried to deny I was gay, they took off my shoes and began beating the soles of my feet with cables. The pain was excruciating. I was still blindfolded. They had found dildos in the house where the party was-they beat me with them, stuffed them in my mouth. When I told them my father was a martyr [of the Iran-Iraq war] they beat me up even more, and harder. They took away my card [entitling Amir to martyr's benefits] and said they'd tell the local university, where I was studying computers.”
Amir said that, at the same time, “They went to my house, seized my computer, found online homoerotic pictures of guys in it, and showed them to my mother. That's how mother found out I was gay. Eventually I was tried and fined 100,000 tomens [or about $120, a large sum in Iran]. At the time he fined me, the judge told me that 'if we send you to a physician who vouches that your rectum has been penetrated in any way, you will be sentenced to death.'”


Most of the anti-gay crackdown, Amir said, is conducted by the basiji, a sort of unofficial para-police under the authority of the hard-line Revolutionary Guards (called Pasdaran in Persian.) It is the basiji-thugs recruited from the criminal classes and the lumpen unemployed-who are assigned to be agents provocaeurs, and are given the violent dirty work, so the regime can claim it wasn't officially responsible. For example, during recent university strikes and demonstrations, it was the basiji who were charged with the defenestrations and the vicious beatings of rebellious students. t
A year after his first arrest, an unrepentant Amir was in a Yahoo gay chat room on the Web.


“Someone came into the chat room and started messaging me, but I told him he wasn't my type and gave him a description of the kind of guy I was looking to meet,” Amir recalled. “A few minutes later, another guy started messaging me. We exchanged pix, and he sent me his Web page right away-and he matched exactly all the descriptions I'd sent to the previous guy. It turned out later both guys were police agents, they had so many they could come up with one who matched the personal preferences of any gay guy in the chat rooms.

“With this second guy, I was really excited, and we made a date for that afternoon at a phone booth near Bagh-e-Safa Bridge. When I got there, we started to walk away to talk and get to know each other. But within 30 seconds, I felt a hand laid on my shoulder from behind-it was an undercover agent in regular clothes, whose name turned out to be Ali Panahi. With two other basiji, he handcuffed me, forced me into a car, and took me back to the Intelligence Ministry headquarters, a very scary place. There, I denied that I was gay, and denied that this had been a gay rendezvous-but they showed me a printout from the chat room of my messages and my pix.”

Then, said Amir, the torture began.
“There was a metal chair in the middle of the room-they put a gas flame under the chair, and made me sit on it as the metal seat got hotter and hotter. They threatened to send me to an army barracks where all the soldiers were going to rape me. There was a soft drink bottle sitting on a table-Ali Panahi told one of the other basiji to take the bottle and shove it up my ass, screaming, 'This will teach you not to want any more cock!' I was so afraid of sitting in that metal chair as it got hotter and hotter that I confessed. Then they brought out my file, and told me that I was a 'famous faggot' in Shiraz. They beat me up so badly that I passed out, and was thrown, unconscious, into a holding cell. When I came to, I saw there were several dozen other gay guys in the cell with me. One of them told me that, after they had taken him in, they beat him and forced him to set up dates with people through chat rooms-and each one of those people had been arrested, those were the other people in that cell with me.


“We were eventually all taken to court, and cross-examined. The judge sentenced four of us, including me, to public flogging. The news was printed all over the newspapers that a group of homosexuals had been arrested, with our names. I got 100 lashes-I passed out before the 100 lashes were over. When I woke up, my arms and legs were so numb that I fell over when they picked me up from the platform on which I'd been lashed. They had told me that, if I screamed, they will beat me even harder-so I was biting my arms so hard, to keep from screaming, that I left deep teeth wounds in my own arms.”
After this entrapment and public flogging, Amir's life became unbearable-he was rousted regularly at his home by the basiji and by agents of the Office for Promotion of Virtue and Prohibition of Vice (which represses “moral deviance”-things such as boys and girls walking around holding hands, women not wearing proper Islamic dress or wearing makeup, same-sex relations, and prostitution).


But after the hangings of two gay teens in the city of Mashad in July of this year-and the worldwide protests that followed those hangings-Amir said that things got even worse for him and other Iranian gays. Amir was under continual surveillance, harassed, and threatened.

“After the Mashad incident, the visits from the authorities would become an almost daily occurrence,” he said. “They would come to my house and threaten me. They knew everything about everything I did, about everywhere I went. They would tell me exactly what I had done each and every time I had left the house. It had gotten to the point where I was starting to suspect my own friends of spying on me.

“On one of these visits, Ali Panahi-the one who'd arrested me the last time-grabbed me by the hair and asked me if I'd suck his cock if he asked me to. One of my friends was raped by Ali Panahi, who fucked my friend in exchange for letting him go without a record. 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. I could not get a job because of my case history. Since I was obviously gay I couldn't get a job anywhere, and could not get a government job because of my record.”

By the last time the cops came to his house, Amir had decided to try to leave the country.

“I invented an excuse, and told them I had to go to Tehran to take my higher university entrance exams,” Amir said. “I already had a passport from three years ago. In Tehran I borrowed a little money from a friend and came to Turkey by bus. At the border, I really lucked out-I was terrified because I had a record, and not enough money to get out or pay a bribe.”

But indolent border guards didn't bother to check on him-they just took his passport, stamped it, and let him leave. That, said Amir, was about a month ago.



When asked what message he wants to send to the world about what's happening in Iran, and what he thinks about his own future, Amir paused, then said: “The situation of gays in Iran is dreadful. We have no rights at all. They would beat me up and tell me to confess to things I hadn't done, and I would do it. The gays and lesbians in Iran are under unbelievable pressure-they need help, they need outside intervention. Things are really bad. Really bad. We are constantly harassed in public, walking down the street, going to the store, going home… anywhere and anywhere, everyone, everyone! One of my dear friends, Nima, commited suicide a month ago in Shiraz. He just couldn't take it anymore.

“I don't know what's going to happen to me. I've run out of money. I don't know what to do. I just hope they don't send me back to Iran. They'll kill me there.”

[whereme]

is there a link? Thank you anyway

[Nick80]

is there a link? Thank you anyway
The video's link is on the first page.

[ifeelso]

wow..that was a sad story, i almost cryed...it makes me think, how good we have life in other places around the world

[tooniceguy]

horrific..

Religion is the one true evil in the world, i was bought up staunchly christian, and truly resent it, i despise religion in all its forms, its utter filth