From the New York Sun
By GRACE RAUH
Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 24, 2007
President Ahmadinejad's contention during a speech at Columbia University today that there are no homosexuals in Iran drew a swift rebuke from an international gay rights organization based in New York today.
In response to a question on the treatment of gays in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: "We don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country. We don't have this phenomenon I don't know who's told you we have it."
A spokesman for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Hossein Alizadeh, said that in Iran, "there is always this constant fear of execution and persecution and also social stigma associated with homosexuality."
Mr. Alizadeh, who said he is gay and moved to America from Tehran in 2000, said the commission has documented numerous cases of gay persecution, including execution, in Iran.
"You are constantly being told that this is wrong and not the way to go and unacceptable," he said. "Also you have the government that is systematically repressing any expression of homosexuality."
It is difficult to know for certain the number of Iranians executed because they are gay, because the government doesn't disclose the real reasons that lead to arrests, he said.
Mr. Alizadeh, who was not openly gay while living in Iran, said that there are many cases, himself among them, of Iranians in America and other countries seeking asylum because of their sexual orientation. Iran is one of the worst countries in the world to be a homosexual, he said.
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