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- Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Gay rights activists have asked to meet former Iranian president H. E. Sayed Mohammed Khatami during his visit to Melbourne, hosted by Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier.
After outrage from the Jewish community, Freier extended an invitation to them and other religious minorities persecuted in Iran under Khatami’s regime from 1997 to 2005.
Australian Coalition for Equality spokesman Rodney Croome said if Freier’s invitation was sincere he would extend it to GLBT groups.
We want to ask Mohammad Khatami whether he supports the persecution and execution of homosexuals, and what, if anything, will bring the harassment and killing to an end, Croome said in a statement today.
Khatami was invited to Australia by La Trobe’s Centre for Dialogue and will give a public lecture on 26 March. The Centre asked Freier to host a function at his Anglican Archdiocese residence for Khatami.
The Jewish Community Council of Victoria resigned from the Centre’s board of advisors in protest this week. But the Centre’s director Professor Joseph Camilleri told The Age that the response was an over-reaction.
Tags: Australian Coalition for Equality, Iran, Jewish
March 19th, 2009 @ 11:02 am
This quasi-fascist makes the Pope look like a friend of the gay community.
March 19th, 2009 @ 11:20 am
Although by Iranian standards Mr Khatami is a moderate, he does indeed support the death penalty for homosexuality and has confirmed this a number of times, including to an audience of Harvard students in September of 2006.
March 19th, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
I understand Fred Phelps (“God Hates Fags”) was refused entry to Australia by the previous government. And rightly so. Khatami and the regime he represents are worse than Phelps in that they have actually put gay people in Iran to death. Why ask this character to give a public lecture? If he supports the death penalty for gays there is no dialogue. I’m with the Jewish Community Council on this one.
March 19th, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
I have visited Iran twice and have many Iranian friends who are gay. Khatami is praised by most Iranians as being one of the most democratic presidents they’ve had since the Revolution. It’s argued that Khatami began the process of opening Iran up to the Western world. Unfortunately, it’s not the President and the Majlis who run Iran, it’s the mullahs and the Ayatollah via the Guardian Council.
Whilst it’s true that gay men lack human rights in Iran, don’t forget that ALL people, gay and straight, lack rights in Iran when it comes to freedom of sexuality.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his mullahs are to blame for the majority of human rights abuses in Iran.
President Ahmenadajad is a propaganda puppet of the mullahs and will do and say what ever he’s told. Khatami, at least, displayed a modicum of defiance.
March 20th, 2009 @ 8:02 am
Well said, Bruce. And let’s not forget that when France and the Netherlands co-sponsored a declaration calling upon the decriminalisation of homosexuality worldwide in the UN General Assembly was last year, it was opposed by fifty-seven countries, including the United States. (The opposing statement said the initiative could lead to, -œthe social normalization, and possibly the legitimisation, of many deplorable acts including pedophilia.)
When the allies liberated those in the concentration camps after WWI, they left the gays behind, to be re-incarcerated in German jails. And it seems to me that while we tolerate the obscene war crimes of Iraq and the US (there ARE human rights other than gay rights) and still ignore homosexual persecution around the world, not that much has changed.
So while Australia did at least support the UN declaration, let’s not get too pontifical.
March 20th, 2009 @ 10:31 am
Um, ‘..in the concentration camps after WW*II*, ” :)
March 20th, 2009 @ 10:32 am
Oh, and “..the obscene war crimes of Iraq and the US ” should be “the obscene war crimes of Israel and the US ” sorry, the coffee should kick in soon.
March 20th, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
Actually the US will be signing that declaration any day now-
“U.S. signs UN gay rights declaration”- http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_11940829
March 20th, 2009 @ 6:55 pm
Shayne, I’ve just finished reading “The Men with the Pink Triangle”- what an eye-opener. The actions of the Allies and the German government post-WWII towards these men were disgraceful.
March 20th, 2009 @ 10:22 pm
True enough, AMP, except that they signed because they realised that “supporting this statement commits us to no legal obligations.” And because 192 member countries had already signed the declaration, the United States was the only western country not to sign. Hardly a profile of an enlightened, humanitarian regime, is it? I suppose it’s redundant to add, the declaration was also opposed by the Vatican. :)
March 21st, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
Its amazing how the conversation ends up “Concentration Camps” As we are constantly bombarded with on TV these days.
March 21st, 2009 @ 1:31 pm
Yes, Ronson, and I wonder how many glbqti know or think about the tens of thousands of homosexuals tortured and murdrered at that time that the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial in Green Park represents. It was the brainchild of Kitty Fischer, whom I met when she was doing Ankali. A gay man kept her alive at Aushwitz where she was held as a young girl, smuggling his ration of a jacket potato to her every day.
There was some opposition to the memorial by the Jewish community who criticised it for ‘equating the Holocaust with homosexual persecution.’ Professor Colin Tatz: “Homosexuals certainly were not the target of annihilation in the manner that Jews were..” etc., and suggesting gays were “jumping on the coat-tails of one group’s suffering and appropriating it for their own.”
Kitty devoted her life to a reconciliation between Jews and the gay community and was adamant that the memory of those who died in the camps would not be erased.
I remember the speech by poor Marcus Einfeld at the opening of the memorial; it gave me goosebumps.
http://www.nswccl.org.au/docs/pdf/Marcus%20Einfeld%20Speech%20G&L%20Memorial%202001.pdf#search=%22Gay%20and%20lesbian%20holocaust%20memorial%20project%22
March 21st, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
Shayne, the declaration is non-binding. It doesn’t commit any of the signatories to any legal enactment. And no way was it signed by “192 countries.” There are 192 member nations of the UN, 66 of which signed up to the declaration in December. 50 others (including South Africa, surprisingly) formally opposed it in a counter-declaration proposed by the Islamic conference. The US and the Vatican didn’t sign up to either declaration in December. The Vatican issued a separate statement opposing all criminal sanctions against homosexual behaviour.
March 21st, 2009 @ 3:04 pm
Actually, only 66 other countries had signed it- still more than the 50 or so that opposed it. The rest were abstentions.
March 21st, 2009 @ 8:35 pm
Should we therefore embrace Khatami’s visit, merely because there were others who were worse and our own allies are not perfect? It’s not a comparative study! The death penalty for homosexuals looks like a pretty black and white issue to me.
March 21st, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
Yes boiz, shayne made ANOTHER typo, that should have read, “66 of the 192 member countries had already signed the declaration.” Memo to self, wait til the second coffee kicks in before hitting ‘enter.’
HGD, while not legally binding, it is a great step forward, the first time that GLBT rights have been discussed in the United Nations. The UN Human Rights Committee, which is responsible for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights declared that such laws are in violation of human rights law. The US WAS concerned that ‘parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.’
The declaration ‘condemns violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatization, and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also condemns killings and executions, torture, arbitrary arrest, and deprivation ‘
March 22nd, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
HGD and Andrew M Potts – Shayne is pretty sloppy with his ‘facts’, to put it mildly. He once urged people to read Federico Garcia Lorca on the persecution of gay men in Castro’s Cuba. Never mind that Garcia Lorca had been murdered by Francoists in the early days of the Spanish Civil War in the mid-1930s, almost 25 years before Castro came to power in Cuba.
March 22nd, 2009 @ 3:01 pm
Khatami’s views about homosexuality are on the record.
At Harvard in 2006 he observed that, “….homosexuality is a crime in Islam, and crimes are punishable”.
He did go on to generously concede, “that [whether or not] a crime could be punished by execution is debatable” (especially when you’re on a goodwill visit to Harvard I suspect).
But, back home in Tehran, publicly strangling terrified boys to death for buggery is totally handy, pour encourager les autres…
http://www.iranfreedomconcert.com/khatami.html
As others have observed Khatami is the collegial, huggy-bear, smiley-face of the Iranian Revolution, forever travelling the world to “dialogue” with Archbishops etc while the religious nutjobs who really run the place get on with the important stuff like stoning women to death etc.
If Rodney does get to meet him I’d recommend he asks him whether a blowjob is out of the question. When Khatami was caught on film shamelesly shaking hands with some European women, the Ayatollahs went ballistic. I reckon we could take their anxiety to a whole new level.
March 22nd, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
LOL Rebecca, you must have more issues than the NYT to just make stuff up like that.
March 23rd, 2009 @ 8:12 am
Khatami has to be treated in the same way as if Mugabe was visiting the country. And I bet you if a representive of Focus on the Family or some other American homophobic outfit arrived in Australia, Socialist Alternative would be out there demonstrating faster than you can say ‘Trotsky’. As I said, this character is worse than the most virulent American homophobe because he represents a regime that puts gays to death.
March 23rd, 2009 @ 8:49 am
“If Rodney does get to meet him I’d recommend he asks him whether a blowjob is out of the question.” LOL, please tell me you’re not in the foreign service.
I think, as has been suggested by more enlightened observers, that we have to understand that Iran is not run by the Mullahs, it is a military dictatorship. Khomeini controls the military, the intelligent services, the prosecutors, the police force. He’s not really even an Ayatollah, he does not have the qualifications. He is the man you need to talk to. In a military dictatorship any military conflict can be negotiated. Ideological ones cannot be. (That will be as difficult as convincing Indonesians not to shoot drug dealers, or other Asian nations not to hang them.)
Arabs look at Israel as an outpost of the United States of the West and see Iran not as religious fanatics, but as an anti-colonial power. If we want to win the ideological war we need to change that formula before bringing Iran to the negotiating table. That means implementing Resolution 242; closing the settlements in the West Bank; getting the Israelis to a position where they don’t have to feel they have to bomb Gaza; etc. Then we might be in a position to put foirward our arguments about humanitarian treatments of homosexuals in Iran.
Anyway, I’m thinking that approach might be more productive than asking H. E. Sayed Mohammed Khatami whether a blowjob is out of the question.
March 23rd, 2009 @ 9:32 am
If it was worth waving condoms at WYD participants, this monster certainly deserves some form of protest.
March 23rd, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
Shayne, I’ll think you’ll find many Arabs hate Iran as an interferring wannabe colonial power. Especially Arabs who are Sunni Muslims.
I regard Khatami as a representative of a regime that regards the lives of gays as worthless. And the Iranian government is quite open about that. I am less interested in talking with Khatami and more interested in figuring out ways of getting the regime he represents to collapse.
I wonder what Iranian dissidents and refugees feel about this visit.
March 23rd, 2009 @ 2:10 pm
Shayne, Khomeini IS one of the Mullahs- in fact he’s the chief Mullah! It’s the politicians like Khatami that are on the short leash in Iran. The Mullahs ban a whole host of reform candidates for being “against the spirit of the Islamic Revolution” at every election- one of the reasons real reformist voices never make it into the Iranian Parliament. I think you’re making an assumption about Khatami based on a funny hat.
March 23rd, 2009 @ 3:32 pm
Err… was. Khamenei is the Ayatollah now. Khomeini died in ‘89
March 23rd, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
David Skidmore, Khatami is one of the most moderate of Iran’s leaders, so much so that his own people attacked him (shouting -œDeath to Khatami. We do not want American government.) To put the quote by HGD into context, Khatami added that conditions for determining if homosexuals should be put to death are so strict they are -œvirtually impossible to meet. The question then should be, so why have a death penalty for homosexuals? And you might like to consider your response when Khatami rejoins, ‘if you are so upset about the torture, and execution of homosexuals, where were your voices when your American allies murdered millions of innocent Arabs, and why do you still say nothing about the thousands they have tortured?”
Human rights are human rights, it’s simply syllogistic to argue that gay rights are more important. Torture, persecution and executions are all obscene and barbaric and I think that Khatami should hear our voices. But let’s just get our facts straight first before we charge off on some hysterical Islamophobic lynching party.
Btw. I’m sure the thousands that marched for this very cause in the Mardi Gras would be happy to do an encore.
Andrew, read what I said, “Khomeini [or now, Khamenei] … [is] not really even an Ayatollah, he does not have the qualifications.” He lacks the training in religious law and doctrine to be a Mullah. Also, “It’s the politicians …that are on the short leash in Iran ” is what I just said.
Assuming you read my post, then I wonder why you are repeating what I said. Never mind.
March 24th, 2009 @ 8:07 am
“Arabs see Iran not as religious fanatics, but as an anti-colonial power”
Heh. Arabs tend to see Iranians as bullying, arrogant…um.. Iranians – and secondarily as Shi’a muslims. Iranians tend to regard Arabs as people who are most definitely not Iranian and all too often Sunni.
And I don’t agree that we should tolerate a bit of poof-murdering in Iran because Israel is occupying the West Bank.
March 24th, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
LOL HGD, “Arabs tend to see Iranians as bullying, arrogant-¦” you have no idea, sorry. Everybody in the Middle East,(look at the polls across the board) even countries like Morocco, which are entirely Sunni, look to Tehran as the great anti-imperial power. A large part of Iraq – the Shi’ah parties in particular answer to Tehran. Hasan Nasrallah’s secretary general of Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy. Hezbollah is not an independent force in any sense of the word, it answers to Iran. And so on. Arabs see their fight against the Zionists and their attacks and land grabs on their Arab neighbours through Iran just as the United States looks at the Middle East through Israel and arms it with $20 billion worth of obscene weaponry.
And nobody said, “we should tolerate a bit of poof-murdering,” lol, I said we need to understand the ME situation in order to effect ideological change.
Too much googling, too much jumping up and down like a silly goose …and not enough thinking, honey.
March 24th, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
Shayne, Khatami was the leader of Iran long before America invaded Iraq and Afghanistan (only one of which is an Arab country BTW). The US bungled war on terror has nothing to do with Iran’s treatment of its own people (a majority of whom are also not Arab). To make allegations of Islamophobia here when this regime is the one doing very real lynching of gay people and others is bizarre. At what point are gay people allowed to feel scared of a regime?
March 24th, 2009 @ 3:07 pm
Obviously other human rights count as much as gay rights. But as a gay man, I find it personally repellent that a representative of a regime that executes gays should pay this country a visit. Jewish people here are saying much the same thing for the same reasons. And I have no doubt many women would agree as well. Iran is a major human rights violator and it is not “Islamophobic” to assert what should be obvious.
March 24th, 2009 @ 8:24 pm
Shayne, so really Khatami is a top bloke with the very best reasons for calling for our execution. I wish you were as quick to understand and excuse western governments as you are this fascist dictatorship.
March 24th, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
PS- under the Iranian system, the Mullahs (the “Assembly of Experts”) elect the Ayatollahs from within their own ranks. Although Khatami is a Muslim cleric, he is not and has never been a Mullah. He is a member of the Iranian Parliament (or “Majlis”) which aside from the Mullahs striking out candidates they don’t like is elected democratically. So the Mullahs (of which the Ayatollah is one) ARE in control.
Your statement: “Iran is not run by the Mullahs”
March 25th, 2009 @ 3:41 pm
Hmmm. I assume we’re discussing the best way to effect ideological change in Iraq, and other countries where glbqti are persecuted and executed. And I’m contending that jumping up and down shouting uniformed abuse may not be the best way to effect that change. The real world may be a little more complicated.
Arabs have suffered humiliation in the Middle East for over a hundred years, that is why they support Iran. We’ve lost the anti-colonial game and the Iranians have won it. The US, under Obama, is finally beginning to ackowledge Iran’s dominance in the Middle East and that long term detente has to be negotiated with an acknowledgment of the reality of the West’s treatment of Arabs, particularly in regards to Israel’s policies in Palestine. Recently, Iran has responded, ‘you change and we will.’
merlot, no one said Khatami is a top bloke, or that human rights abuses, whether it be executions in Japan, Penang or Tehran; torture in Guantamo or Abu Graib or any of the fundamentlist Islam nations are ever excusable. Nor are the million Muslims killed by the West in the last decade. Etc etc.
Andrew, Google seems to have bred a new genus of uncritical pedants. Iran is not run by the Mullahs, it is a military dictatorship. Khamenei, the supreme leader, controls the country. It’s a military dictatorship. Ahmadinejad for example, often will not be invited to meetings of the Iranian security council. Khamenei does not have the qualifications to be the Ayatollah, yet he runs the army. He is the man we need to talk to.
March 25th, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
Khamenei isn’t a military leader, he’s a cleric, so how is it a military dictatorship? It’s a theocracy propped up by a religious secret police and an army.
“Khamenei does not have the qualifications to be the Ayatollah”- and yet HE IS!
I think you’d find many people in the Middle East dismiss the notion that Hezbollah is merely an Iranian proxy as US/Israeli propaganda.
March 27th, 2009 @ 4:59 pm
I think you’ll find that many Arabs loathe Iran – and not just the Arab ruling elites (who naturally fear Iran’s destabilising influence in the region). Many Arabs are Sunni Muslims and Iran is Shiite Muslim. This is not an insignificant difference.
In terms of engaging with representatives of the Iranian regime, I personally wouldn’t. I think they should be treated like Zimbabwe or North Korea. How can you reason with a regime that wants you dead? Any dealings with Iran must be underpinned with a scheme to make the regime collapse.
Also, I’ll think you’ll find that the responsibility for the greatest number of Muslim deaths lies at the feet of local governments – Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Saudi monarchy, Iranian theocrats and the Assads of Syria are among the culprits.
March 28th, 2009 @ 8:02 am
David, while it’s true there are some concerns among Sunni Arabs about the growing influence of the (sometimes Iran-backed) Shiite populations present in many Arab countries, anti-Americanism now runs much, much deeper than any concerns about Iranian or Shiite influence. That anti-Americanism has been hardened by the policies Washington has pursued toward Iraq and the Palestinian territories, and toward Israel during its destructive attacks on it’s neighbours. Israel has 340 thermonuclear devices with which it has already threatened Syria. Even in US-friendly Kuwait, the government-sponsored Al-Rai newspaper has published stridently anti-US editorials.
The Iranian regime will not collapse, it has been given dominance in the region by the coalition of the witless. However, there is hope for change, including bringing them into line with Western ideals of human – and glbqti – rights. Barack Obama has welcomed -œnew beginning with Iran, he said that the US wanted to engage with their country and end decades of strained relationship -” but it will take change on both sides. Iran has agreed. Of course while the guards are still gouging Arab eyes at Gitmo and occupying Muslim countries, it may take some time. And of course Israel is a huge part of the formula.
I recently watched a very moving documentary about the first Arab/Jewish school in Israel. The parents of the children were, of course, hateful and bitter but the kids learned each other’s cultures and prayers. They were soon asking, “how do you say ‘I love you’ in your language?” and were leading each other blindfolded by the hand in an exercise of trust. At the very end, Jewish children told the Arabs, “when we grow up we will have to join the army and kill Arabs,” to which the response was, “if you do that we will have to bomb your house..”
Change can come, and eventually will. But it will require a lot of work, precipitated by dropping the willful ignorance and prejudice that characterises both the Western and Muslim worlds.
p.s. you might like to check your facts about the number of Muslim deaths under despots like Hussein vs. US/Israel attacks.
March 31st, 2009 @ 8:37 am
Here’s an interesting link that includes casualty figures under Saddam Hussein:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm
It also includes other figures such as casualties from the Iran-Iraq War – a war pretty much the responsibility of Hussein and nothing to do with US-Zionist machinations. And Israel and the US also have nothing to do with the anti-gay policies of Muslim regimes (not to mention the appalling treatment of Kurds or Palestinians for that matter in Muslim countries).
If people in the Arab world are getting behind the Iranian regime as some sort of saviour they will be disappointed going by Tehran’s policies to date.