Petrelis Files

State Dept Asked to Include Gay Abuse in Annual Report

[This letter was snail mailed today.]

October 7, 2005

LeRoy Potts
U.S. State Department
Deputy Director for Human Rights
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Mr. Potts:

I am sending you a hard copy of veteran independent investigative journalist Doug Ireland's story from the September 29 issue of Boston's Bay Windows newspaper, which is about the abuse and torture of a 22-year-old gay Iranian man, identified only by his first name Amir. I am also enclosing the photos of Amir's back, covered in welts from the lashings he received while in Iran's jails for being gay.

In your capacity as author of the State Department's important annual human rights report to Congress, I am formally requesting that you include Ireland's story about Amir in the 2005 report.

I feel, as an American and a gay human rights advocate, that it's crucial for you to include in the next report as much documentation as possible from gay and human rights activists in Iran and in exile about the tragic abuse of gay and lesbian Iranians, particularly the public hangings of two gay teenage boys, Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, in July in Mashad.

I will telephone you next week to make sure you have received Ireland's Bay Windows story. Should you have any questions about my request, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Regards,
Michael Petrelis
San Francisco, CA
Ph: 415-621-6267

-


September 29, 2005
Bay Windows

A gay man speaks: torture of gays is routine
By Doug Ireland

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. He was beaten and tortured while in custody, threatened with death, and lashed 100 times. He escaped from Iran in August, and is now in Turkey, where he awaits the granting of asylum by a gay-friendly country. In a two-hour telephone interview from Turkey, Amir 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. Our conversation took place thanks to the generous translation provided by Dr. Houman Sarshar, who also provided research assistance for this piece. 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 Shiraz a favorite vacation spot for Iranian gays - but after the 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini, Shiraz was targeted as a symbol of taaghoot (decadence). Amir's father was killed by a gas attack in the Iran-Iraq war in the 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, says "I've known I was gay since I was about 5 or 6 - 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. 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 trans-sexual - 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.
[snip]