ANKARA, 19 Jul 2006 (IRIN) - Human rights groups are calling for greater protection of gay rights... IRAN: Activists mark anniv

ANKARA, 19 Jul 2006 (IRIN) - Human rights groups are calling for greater protection of gay rights in Iran as the first anniversary of the public execution of two gay teenagers in the country is marked.

Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, were publicly hanged on 19 July last year in Mashad, provincial capital of Iran's Khorasan province, on charges of homosexuality.

Asgari was accused of raping a 13-year-old boy. However, groups like Outrage, a London-based group for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people (LGBT), maintain it was a false charge designed to undermine public sympathy for the teenagers.

Philip Braun, secretary-general of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), condemned the continued threat of the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts between adults in Iran.

Braun, speaking from Bonn in Germany, said the “barbaric punishment” for homosexuality - still used in nine countries including Iran - contravened the findings of the UN Commission on Human Rights and UN Human Rights Committee.

But members of the LGBT community continue to face discrimination, harassment, abuse, torture and death at the hands of the authorities in Iran.

The surveillance of gay meeting places, raids on private homes, arrests by regular police and Basiji (religious police) was common, with the internet and phone wiretaps used to entrap homosexual men, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

"Sometimes the torture is the result of a criminal sentence [usually floggings]. Sometimes they are beaten severely or sexually abused in pre-trial detention," he said from New York.

Women whose sexuality did not conform to heterosexual norms also faced the death penalty, domestic violence and forced marriage, psychiatric and medical treatment.

Arsham Parsi, secretary of human rights affairs for the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO), said the situation left gay men with no option but to hide.

In a letter to the United Nations, PGLO said that under Islamic law the penalty for sexual relations between two men was death, with a judge deciding the method of execution. The options included stoning, hanging, hurling from a height or death by sword.

"This brutality occurs within the Islamic regime of Iran, while the agreement of social and political rights of the world organisation [the UN] has banned torture and execution punishments for consensual relations between adults," the letter read.

It added that under Islamic law there was no boundary between "sexual abuse" and "homosexual relations", warning: "What we are highly concerned with and urgently ask from you is that a ban be placed on the execution of homosexuals and legal protection be provided to them in Iran."

Long said it was important that the attention focused on the Mashad case did not detract from the broader pattern of abuse suffered by LGBT people in Iran.

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