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Friday, 02 May 2008 |
 Continuing our global survey of GLBTI life today, Maxine Clarke looks at the current situation in Iran.
In the Pink Corner
In the heroes’ corner for Iran, Arsham Parsi stands proud, air-punching and poised to left-hook the Middle Eastern religious right into a sexuality revolution.
Arsham Parsi was born in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as the Iranian government began to enforce the death penalty for all sexual relations taking place outside of traditional heterosexual marital relationships.
Having witnessed close friends commit suicide under pressure from government and family, and endure police brutality, torture, imprisonment and harassment from the police and the general public on an almost daily basis; Parsi is well accustomed to keeping on his toes. The spokesperson, secretary and co-founder of the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (now known as IRQO) currently resides in Canada, on death row exile from his homeland, where homosexuality is punished with public execution.
Speaking to Afdhere Jama from HOMAN (The Iranian Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Organization Inc) Parsi recounted his despair at being forced to flee Iran after a warrant for his arrest and execution was issued.
“On Tuesday March 4th, 2005, at 1:30pm, when I escaped from Iran to Turkey, I cried heavily as I passed the Iranian border... I made the promise to myself and my homeland that I will come back one day. I don’t know when or how, but I know I want to go back.... I’m in exile now, and I don’t have too much personal life, as I’m fighting to live freely in Iran tomorrow.”
And indeed, the events preceding and following Parsi’s departure from Iran indicate that the seasoned fighter knew his time was fast approaching.
US-based organisation Human Rights Watch reports how in June 2004, shortly after Parsi had fled, a police chat-room sting outed several gay Iranian men, who were then coerced into confession through torture, and sentenced to be flogged - up to 175 lashes each - for their ‘crimes’.
On November 13, 2005, eight months after Parsi left Iran, two gay men, Mokhtar N. (24) and Ali A. (25), were publicly hanged in their town square.
Parsi continues his presence in the fight ringside; coaching his GLBTI brothers and sisters back home in their fight against Iran’s homophobic government, through his tireless volunteer work across the two continents, including a personal address to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Parsi offered this war-cry to his brethren in a June 13, 2006 speech at a gala dinner held by Egale Canada (Canada’s national gay rights group) and ARC International (a Canadian-based organisation working to advance GLBT equality internationally).
“I am ready to give my hands and offer my shoulders to all my LGBT fellows and friends... I will summon their tears and motivate them to change their sighs of regret to the shouts for freedom in the battle against ignorance, outrage and injustice in our society.”
In 2007, when Iranian President Mohmoud Ahmadinejad absurdly claimed, during a visit to the United States, that there were no sexual minorities in Iran; Arsham Parsi, with the support of the American press, finally had the opportunity to challenge his opponent directly, without fear for his life.
“Who am I?” the New York Sun reports Parsi as asking. “Who am I, if we don’t have any queers in Iran?”
www.arshamparsi.net
In the Black Corner
Fouling and clinching his way to KO’s, President Mohmoud Mahmoud has fought below the belt to ensure there are no neutral corners in which Iran’s queers can seek refuge.
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you we have that,” was the Iranian President’s response to questions about his country’s human rights record concerning sexual minorities, during his September 2007 appearance at Columbia University.
How do you challenge Iran’s highest-ranking public official when he claims that there are no queers in his homeland?
Quite easily, it seems, when that official asserts, almost in the same breath, that his country - renowned for human rights violations against women, and a preoccupation with nuclear warfare - asserts that women are treated equally, and the country desires nuclear power for peaceful purposes only.
Quite easily, when, just several minutes earlier, he stopped a breath away from insisting the Holocaust did not exist.
Welcome to the dirty-fighting world of Mohmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President and homo-hater extraordinaire.
Born in 1956, Ahmadinejad grew up in the rough neighbourhoods of South Tehran under the dictatorial reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police routinely used torture to bolster his power.
By the time Ahmadinejad attended Elm-o Sanaat University as an engineering student in 1975, he was devoted to Islamic fundamentalism, dedicated to initiating an Islamic world revolution.
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