Gay Iranian Given 100 Lashes

Yes, I’m outraged as well. We all should be. Amir is lucky to even be alive in Iran. I’m going to be quite blunt here. I expect such treatment from a backward tenth-rate nation such as Iran. Think I’m being too harsh? Think I don’t understand all the issues involved? Perhaps I don’t. But, I don’t really have too. All I have to do is look at the photo below and realize that the only thing this young man is guilty of is being gay. That is why he is wearing those 100 lashes on his back. Is there honestly anything else that is relevant for me to understand?

As I said, I expect that from Iran. What I hope for is that countries such as the United States and Great Britain (they call them “civilized” countries), would actually say and do something about it. But we don’t. We don’t even give asylum to people like Amir. In fact, we, along with other “civilized” countries have deported gay refugees back to their country knowing full well what awaits them once they get there.

I don’t know what they answer is. We go to war with Iraq to “promote freedom”. And when something like this happens to someone like Amir, we do nothing. When the two teenage boys were hanged by Iran on July 19, the United States did nothing. Not even a mention, except from the “liberal groups” and “liberal blogs”, like mine. It’s as if we just don’t care. How on earth can we care so much about “WMD’s” and “freeing the Iraqi people”, when we have little or no regard for what happens just next door to Iraq?

LONDON, September 20 - The bruised and bloodied body of a 22 year old gay Iranian, Amir, bears further witness to the brutality of the Ayatollah’s regime. Yet many gay and human rights groups in “the West” are sweeping the matter under the carpet.

Amir escaped Iran after the authorities threatened him with execution for being gay - but not before he was subjected to the barbarism of 100 lashes, which left his back covered in huge bloody welts.

A copy of Amir’s story, together with photos of his savage injuries, has been sent to the British LGBT human rights group OutRage! by Iranian LGBT activists.

“This is a further example of the violent homophobia of the Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist regime”, fumed Brett Lock of OutRage!

“OutRage! is appalled that large sections of liberal and left opinion in the West shows little concern regarding the murderous brutality of the clerical fascist regime in Tehran.” (source)

What it was like for Amir

“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 as, 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.” ... (source)