Thursday 13 March 2008

HUMAN RIGHTS BE HANGED!

I am abandoning the usual, frivolous, light-hearted tone of this blog today in order to draw your attention to a story in yesterday's issue of The Times.

It begins...
A gay Iranian teenager faces deportation from Britain and execution in his home country after a Dutch court refused to hear his asylum claim. Mehdi Kazemi, 19, will be forced to return to Britain, where his asylum application was rejected last year.

He is then expected to be “removed” to Iran where his boyfriend was hanged two years ago for sodomy.
The ruling will put the Home Office under renewed pressure to reassess his case — or face the possibility of sending a young man to his death. The department’s own guidance concedes that Iran executes homosexuals but rejects the claim that there is a systematic repression of gay men and lesbians.
The emphasis is mine and is probably unnecessary since the patent absurdity of this statement is unlikely to have passed you by.

I would urge you to read the story in full: Gay teenager is facing gallows as his asylum bid is rejected; along with an earlier Times article from last year: Gays should be hanged, says Iranian minister.

And anyone doubting the likelihood of this young gay man ending his life on an Iranian gallows should contemplate the widely-reported accusation that 4,000 homosexual men and women have been executed in Iran in the last thirty years.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Horrible. And most horrible the fact that all the "civilized" countries of the west make bussiness with countries like Iran or China forgetting the constant violation of human rights.

(Sorry, perhaps I use to make gramatical mistakes in english, but I think too that is comprehensible what I mean)

Brian Sibley said...

GILL comments...

I cannot tell you how sad and angry this makes me.

I have never understood and never will how love can be a crime.

Sometimes the Home Office makes the right decisions, I pray that it will this time.

I imagine the campaigning organisations will use all the influence they can, also I understand it is possible to start petitions on the No. 10 website, this would be a worthy cause for such a petition.

Jaded and Cynical said...

So the government's position is that it will facilitate the execution of gay teenagers in Iran, just so long as the killing isn't done in a 'systematic' way?

That's stunning.

Jaded and Cynical said...

Brian, that's stunning.

Thanks for highlighting the story.

David Weeks said...

Our Iranian local restauranteur was as appalled as we were but philosophically stated that it is the extremists in power in Iran who take these extreme measures ~ usually it is against abortion, but they do so to make themselves noticed.

I can think of other less barbaric ways of making your mark on the world's political stage.

SharonM said...

Your Blog has further increased my abhorrence of Iran and reinforced my feeling that the British Government have a policy of allowing absolutely the wrong people to stay in the UK (whilst we support them) and showing great insensitivity towards many asylum seekers who are genuinely at risk.