Iran

UN rapporteur warns about Iran torturing LGBT children

Javaid Rehman, the special rapporteur of the United Nations on the human rights situation in Iran, expressed concern in a UN report that said LGBT children are being subjected to torture and cruel treatment.

Rehman said that these practices violate the obligations of Iran under under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The practices reportedly include “electric shocks and the administration of hormones and strong psychoactive medications.”

Iran’s treatment of the LGBT community

According to the UN report, LGBT children are treated to “torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.”

Likewise, the LGBT community “are often advised that their gender nonconformity or same-sex attraction represents so-called gender identity disorder.”

This “necessitates ‘reparative’ therapies or sex reassignment surgeries, to ‘cure’ them,” according to the report.

It further said the Iranian government was claiming that “there were no restrictions on medical services and that any treatment was administered with consent.”

Moreover, the report indicated that security forces raided houses and monitored Internet sites for information on LGBT persons.

Officials of the Iranian government have not made any comment about the UN report. This report is set to be discussed during the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

Status of the LGBT people in Iran

In the 2019 Country Report of the US State Department on human rights practices, Iranian security forces have allegedly harassed, arrested, and detained individuals suspected of being members of the LGBT community.

Likewise, gays and lesbians that are found engaging in consensual sex are subjected to the death penalty.

In reaction to the report, Peter Tatchell, a British LGBT and human rights campaigner, told the Jerusalem Post that, “These abuses echo anti-LGBT+ medical treatments by the Nazis and other fascist regimes.”

“It is a shocking revelation that the Iranian regime subjects LGBT+ children to electric shocks, hormone treatments and psychoactive medications in a bid to ‘cure’ their sexual orientation & gender identity,” Tatchell said.

The Jerusalem Post had previously reported that a 2008 British WikiLeaks cable had revealed that Iran had executed 4,000-6,000 gays and lesbians since the country’s Islamic revolution in 1979.

Other items in the UN report

Rehman also reported the repression of women and girls and was “deeply concerned at the persistent discrimination against women and girls in public and private life.”

He pointed out that “the legal age for a girl to marry in the Islamic Republic of Iran is 13 years, with even younger girls allowed to marry with paternal and judicial consent.”

Further, he expressed alarm over “reports of secret executions” against those who protest with “death sentences issued in these cases” after alleged “unfair trials.”

The “systematic use of torture to extract forced confessions” is also being conducted in these cases.

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