Pictures of gay man beaten and lashed in Iran

[PageOneQ]

COMPLETE PHOTO SET AND DEVELOPING STORY...

Horrific pictures of a 22 - year - old gay Iranian torture victim have been released. SOON TO be posted on PageOneQ: exclusive interview with Amir, the young victim of the anti-gay crackdown -- whose injuries are captured in the photos, and who recently escaped from Iran -- by Senior Contributing Editor Doug for New York's Gay City News. Advance exceprts from the interview will be posted on PageOneQ as soon as they are available. Developing...


COMPLETE PHOTO SET AND DEVELOPING STORY...

WARNING: These photos are graphic.

[leveymg]

1. We begin bombing in five minutes. n/t

[malachibk]

4. Yeah, right. Like the USA gives a s**t about gay bashing.

n/t

[leveymg]

14. Don't confuse your issues.

When the same news item comes out of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, then it can properly be called a gay-bashing story.

By the way, there are plenty of places around the world where such abuses still occur. Check with the SF-based International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission. But, you don't hear regularly about it because it doesn't serve the interests of the neo-cons.

Make no mistake. This is Iran-bashing.

[malachibk]

24. Not quite sure what you mean

I don't think that the majority of Americans care about gay bashing whether it happpens in Wyoming or Iran. Do you think that bush would actually use this as a way to justify an invasion? No way. Bush's supporters would happily destroy all homosexuals themselves.

[noahmijo]

2. Iran is a shitstain of a country

No I don't support a pointless war against Iran, but as far as I'm concerned Iran's leadership are nothing but a bunch of thugs and sadists, which I know is no thanks to America's effort in installing The Shah, ect.

[sasha031]

3. probably makes the Christan right envious

between the Mullahs and the insanity in this country, I often have to remind myself what century we are in. the cruelty is just so horrible.

[Raster]

7. Iran is but another example of American hubris and ignorance

in the Middle East. Certain aspects of our government obviously learned NOTHING in Iran, thus Iraq.

Favorite Iran story: the texas white-boy petroleum mafia used bush1 to negotiate with the Iranian government holding American hostages in captivity. The deal was simple, DELAY the release of the American hostages until a more auspicious time, and Iran's credit line with the world's largest purveyor of weaponry would be secretly reinstated. Iran would get weapons to use in their various engagements with Iraq, who we were also arming. Literally within minutes of ray-gun's installation, the hostages were released.

[Catfight]

5. Matthew Shepherd was beaten, tortured and left to die alone in America.

I don't hear any outcry anymore in America, what I hear is more gay-baiting and gay hating and our leader of hate, George W. Bush has perpetuated that mentality of fear of differences.

[Raster]

8. Thank you! Sanctioned homophobia is alive and well and living

in the United States with his friends sexism and racism. It's a hate thing. Keeps everyone fighting amongst themselves instead of paying attention to what's really going on.

[oblivious]

6. I'm not sure I understand the point of this photo set.

No story, no interview, no indication if it is random gay bashing or if there is government complicity. Just pictures of someone with what looks like lash marks on his back.

What's the point!

[PageOneQ]

9. What LOOKS LIKE???????

Is tht post for real???

[Minstrel Boy]

12. You provide no information, no story, to this.

And maybe it's the fault of the resolution of the photographs, but the marks could be anything.

I have a website too, but I don't post from it to LBN.

[Journeyman]

13. I have to agree with you, Minstrel Boy. . .

the pictures do not seem conclusive this gentleman was beaten, let alone lashed. A curious lack of running blood, for one. Could be the resolution is quite low (artifacts in the first image point to that), but I'll give the OP the benefit of the doubt until the extended story is published. Perhaps he'll post a link to this thread.

[PageOneQ]

15. The story coming

The story coming is written by PageOneQ's Senior Contributing Editor, Doug Ireland. Doug has personally interviewed the young man in the photographs, which were not taken immediately after the lashings.

Doug is a longtime radical political journalist and media critic and a former columnist for the Village Voice, the New York Observer, New York magazine, the Parisian daily Lib�ration and other papers, and writes for a variety of publications on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as being a contributing editor of Poz magazine and In These Times.

The photos were moved before the story because they had started to appear in the UK...and the PageOneQ team thought it would be in the best interest of our readers to not hold back on what was clearly moving around the world quickly.

As soon as the interview with Amir, the young man in the photos (and yes the photos are real, despite what some may thing -- rather unbelievable if you ask me) is up, I will link to it here. The interview with Amir is being prepared and will be posted, in excerpt form, tonight.

Mike Rogers
Editor/Publisher
PageOneq.com

[jonnyblitz]

11. umm...there is a paragraph accompanying the pictures

explaining briefly who the person is and that there will be an interview with the man in the pictures later("developing"). In other words, a more detailed account is to follow. I am not sure what your problem is. :shrug:

[oblivious]

16. My problem is that it is not exactly LBN.

Printing the pics as LBN without the story of exactly what happened, who was involved, what the conditions were, what the marks are from, etc. seems, well, inappropriate somehow, with just a headline "beaten and lashed in Iran".

Forgive me, but I'm wary of these articles trying to demonize Iran at a time when the US govt seems to be looking for a pretext to invade.

[JNelson6563]

28. You chose your name wisely

:toast:

[oblivious]

30. Good one J. Haven't heard that before. Yours is pretty creative too.

[meegbear]

10. Thank you for the story ...

and :party: WELCOME ABOARD! :party:

I check out your site daily.

[IndianaGreen]

17. Name one country in the Middle East where GLBTs are safe

Hint: The country's name begins with an "I" and ends with an "L".

[Laughing Mirror]

18. Meanwhile, back in Texas . . .

Ex-inmate's prison rape lawsuit goes to trial
Gay man claims he was sexually assaulted almost every day
WICHITA FALLS, Texas (AP) | Sep 19, 9:51 PM

An eight-man, six-woman jury was selected Monday in the federal civil trial of seven Texas prison officials accused of refusing to protect a gay inmate from being sold as a sex slave and repeatedly raped.

. . .

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Mike Viesca has declined to comment on the case. The department had argued before the appeals court that the prison officials were immune from being sued for damages because the law did not clearly establish whether their conduct violated Johnson’s rights.

. . .

http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/images/johnson,roderick-large.jpg
Keith Roderick Johnson

Johnson, a Navy veteran, was sent to prison in 2000 after violating the terms of his probation from a 10-year sentence in 1992 for burglarizing a Harrison County house.

He said that as the abuse escalated, he repeatedly filed complaints and talked to a prison committee about being moved to another unit or area safer for gay and other vulnerable inmates. But prison officials told him to fight the other inmates and refused to move him until the ACLU’s National Prison Project intervened, the ACLU said.

http://washingtonblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=2558

I don't know about you, but it sounds like torture to me.

[Beam Me Up]

21. Torture is exactly what it is. And it goes on every day in THIS country.

And prison officials know it and allow it as a form of population control.

[yurbud]

19. the only thing to do is firebomb their children and grandmothers

to teach those bastards some tolerance.

I'm sure the Bush administration would be willing to form a gay brigade to invade Iran--then give them all the boot once they don't need them anymore.

[yurbud]

20. the only thing to do is firebomb their children and grandmothers

to teach those bastards some tolerance.

I'm sure the Bush administration would be willing to form a gay brigade to invade Iran--then give them all the boot once they don't need them anymore.

[TNOE]

22. I don't know if you can possibly believe this or not

I ALMOST CAN'T - but my senior mother was telling me last night that their preacher (at the Baptist church, no less) had a scathing sermon Sunday morning on homosexuals and Clinton's sex (of course) and that she said she had never been so shocked in her life and that "she had no idea" - that is was so upsetting she couldn't even talk about it and that she couldn't get "it" off her mind - after discussion on other topics she all of a sudden blurted out that the preacher said that homosexuals "eat their own feces"!!!! I told her that that was not only absoluely false but absolutely ridiculous! She asked how did I know - and I said well, first of all, common sense - they would be dying from E-Coli (which really reassured her) - and that I suppose his point was to demonize gays further so that people would continue their hate. She was so upset about it - and she did say that she really thought the preacher was "losing it" - and had been for awhile.

How on earth can you combat such stupidity??????

[Chimichurri]

25. Good thing she has you to help her sort that out

Imagine how she would feel if she didn't have someone help her squash that imagery. Poor thing, that's a horrific thing to do - especially from a church leader.

[TNOE]

27. Thanks

Yep - I'm their ultra liberal daughter so I am always setting them straight.

A great big welcome to DU too! :hi:

[Laughing Mirror]

23. delete

*

[Raiden]

26. That's absolutely horrible!

:grr:

I couldn't go beyond the first page of photos. How appaling... and no, the US doesn't care about gay rights, or women's rights for that matter.

[stevietheman]

29. I'm gay, but let's realize something... this seems to be part of a trick..

to get progressives on board to the idea of attacking Iran. I'm sorry, but this provides *no grounds* for doing so. These anti-gay measures are detestable and despicable to the nth degree, but it's their country, and their laws. It's up to the people of Iran to change them. Of course, the world should also do whatever it can to apply pressure on the Iranian regime to change its practices. But sending in the military to correct laws we don't like is an inane idea, and *that* needs to be preempted.