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March 09, 2006

Gay Iranian asylum seekers in the Netherlands may be deported

Countering a threat by the Netherlands to deport gay Iranian asylum seekers back to their home country, Human Rights Watch has declared that they will likely be persecuted if forced to return to Iran. The New York City–based international human rights watchdog group made the announcement on Tuesday after the Dutch immigration minister moved to end a six-month moratorium on deporting the refugees, Agence France-Presse reports.

"Men and women suspected of homosexual conduct in Iran face the threat of execution," Scott Long, director of the group's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program, said in a statement. "We have documented brutal floggings imposed by courts as punishment, and torture and ill treatment, including sexual abuse, in police custody."

He added that Iran's criminal code makes sexual intercourse between men a crime "punishable by death" and that the punishment for foreplay is 100 lashes, with execution on the fourth conviction. Women who have sex with women face similar punishment.

Human Rights Watch was responding to a letter to the Dutch parliament last month by the country's immigration minister, who claimed that no Iranians had been executed for being gay and that it was not "impossible" for gay people to live in Iran. She also suggested that religious minorities in the Islamic state wouldn't be persecuted either, as long as they kept a low profile.

According to Long, the Netherlands is legally bound by the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention Against Torture to not deport any asylum seekers fleeing the risk of torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment. (Advocate.com)

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