The teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were reportedly hanged after
they were found guilty of a serious sexual assault charge, some human rights
groups said.
Since that time, gay rights groups in Europe have joined the Persian Gay &
Lesbian Organization, which represents gay Iranian exiles, in citing new
evidence they claim shows Iranian authorities falsely accused the two teens.
Photographs of the July 19, 2005, hangings of Asgari and Marhoni circulated
widely on the Internet, drawing expressions of outrage from gay activists and
human rights organizations.
Tatchell and other activists have reported that as many as 14 gay men have been
executed in Iran in the year following the executions of Asgari and Marhoni.
All had been charged with committing rape and other crimes.
"By instituting charges of kidnap and rape, the Iranian authorities apparently
hope to discredit the victims, discourage public protests and deflect
international condemnation," Tatchell said.
Other cities scheduled to hold protests include Fort Lauderdale; Provincetown,
Massachusetts.; San Diego; San Francisco; Sacramento; Toronto; Amsterdam;
London; Stockholm; Marseilles; Moscow; Brussels; Mexico City; Warsaw;
Frankfort; Berlin; and Vienna.
Gay Iranian exile leaders say they believe Asgari and Marhoni were 17 at the
time they were executed and possibly 15 or 16 at the time they were arrested
one year earlier.
Some gay activists claimed the hangings highlighted a long history of anti-gay
persecution in Iran since Islamic radicals took control of the country in 1979.
But the actual motive for the hangings remains unclear, and three human rights
groups, including the U.S.-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights
Commission, said they received reports that the two youths were executed not
for being gay but for raping a male minor.
While IGLHRC, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said they condemned
Iran's use of capital punishment against juveniles, the three organizations
cautioned gays not to view the incident as necessarily anti-gay.
Tatchell said gays inside Iran told his group that Asgari and Ayaz were
arrested after the parents of one of them turned them in to authorities.
Arsham Parsi, the PGLO's human rights secretary who lives in Toronto, said in
an interview recently that unnamed sources in Iran, including an underground
Iranian gay group, have estimated that 4,000 gays have been executed in Iran
because of their sexual orientation between 1979, when the current regime took
power, and 2000. There was no way to independently verify those numbers.
