[lbo-talk] "There Currently Is No Active Policy of Prosecution of Charges of Homosexuality in Iran"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Joel Wendland joelrw at hotmail.com wrote:
<blockquote>Yoshie:
>is it not a good idea for left-wing
>publications, too, to fact-check their sources as much as possible?

Definitely a good idea.

>Here's my take on the matter, based on the findings of the Committee
>against Torture at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
>for Human Rights:
>"There Currently Is No Active Policy of Prosecution of Charges of
>Homosexuality in Iran":

UNCHR has noted a lot of things about Iran. E.g. treatment of women as
"tyranny," which if one reads Monthly Review webzine (and the rather
disapproving editor's note to another article that point by point shreds the
claims of the first) doesn't exist.</blockquote>

Discrimination against and oppression of women exist in Iran, as they
do in all nations to various degrees; conditions are worse than in
Japan, the USA, and Europe, but they are better than several other
Middle Eastern and African states that should come to anyone's mind
easily.  The main disagreement is over how -- not whether -- to fight
against discrimination and oppression based on gender, sexual
orientation, etc., which I've discussed at PEN-l (among other places)
with others (as well as here before unsubscribing):
<http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2006w27/msg00104.htm>
<http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2006w27/msg00119.htm>.

My argument is that women's rights might be better advanced --
especially in countries like Iran -- if they were embedded in class
demands on the economic front in the Bolivarian fashion.  Otherwise,
women's rights supporters will remain confined in small urban circles
of relatively well-educated, better-off people, their demonstrations
will remain small, and they will be no match for the ruling clerics.
That's not in their interest, nor is it in the interest of the
constituency they claim.

Joel asked: "So who do you believe? It takes us back to the
fact-checking question."

As far as Arsham Parsi is concerned, do you know for sure that he "is
under death sentence in Iran for being a gay activist" (at
<http://www.homanla.org/New/pgloArsham.htm>)?  Or are you taking his
word for it?  If the latter, shouldn't you fact-check that yourself?
You know how the politics of exile works.

As for Iran, I intend to visit the country sometime soon myself
(hopefully before the relation between Iran and Japan will change
badly and my passport won't be welcome any longer!).  I have found an
Iranian-Canadian researcher who recently spent six months studying the
conditions of AIDS patients, treatment, and policy as well as sexual
questions in Iran for his MA thesis, and I will try to interview him
about his observations if I can find his contact info and he is
willing.  I  have other potential resource persons, too, so I will try
to get them to write.

Joel says: "At any rate, the underlying question in these series of
posts, to me,  doesn't seem to be specific human rights abuses, but
whether or not those abuses will be used to bring about a war on
Iran."

That's part of the question, but that is not all there is to it.  I
don't believe there will be a war on Iran any time soon.  There might
be economic sanctions, but it won't be easy to build multinational
ruling-class consensus for it either.

The question is truth -- or lack thereof -- about the claims and
allegations made.  Surely, we should care about whether Iran is really
executing gay men more than about Ward Churchill's footnote, shouldn't
we?  Since they concern the present, not what happened nearly two
hundred years ago?

I had seen some extraordinary claims made by Iranian exiles, _long
before_ the end of the Khatami era: "In the mid-1990s, an exiled
Iranian gay-rights group, Homan, estimated that 4,000 homosexuals had
been executed by the government since 1979" (David Graham, "Fearless
in Canada," 25 June 2006,
<http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1151185832022&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home>).
 Are we supposed to buy things like this without checking?


-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>