I picked up the local D.C. gay paper at my gym last night and found on the front page an article on the Iranian execution on which I blogged below. According to the essay in the Washington Blade (“Mixed reports on Iran hangings: Rights groups dispute claims teens were hanged for being gay“),
Research conducted by the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International has found, so far, that the teenagers were convicted of and executed for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old male, a crime that occurred when the two teens may have been minors.
The story is worth reading, along with another from 365Gay.com, “Full Story Behind ‘Iran Gay Hangings’ Mired In Controversy.” The information in the articles doesn’t change my view that the people who ordered and carried out the execution deserve the same treatment they meted out; even if the charge were rape, rather than consensual sex, and even if they were guilty, execution of minors for rape is a heinous and inexcusable crime. Furthermore, Iranians have stated that the issue of rape is raised in cases of consensual sex in order to avoid shame (and execution) for one of the parties and to further justify death for those charged. The lawlessness, cruelty, and pure evil of the Iranian clerical regime should be exposed for all the world to see.
Note: I had seen the article in the Washington Blade, but the other information was forwarded to me by my friendly webmaster, P.J. Doland.
UPDATE: Columnist Doug Ireland, to whose column I linked in the earlier piece, has a followup column that appeared in the Gay City News.
Yes all those involved deserve to meet the same, if not a worse, fate. I’m not so sure they should, however. There’s a big difference between what one deserves and what the rule of law mandates be done to rectify an unjust act.
That is wise and the best approach in almost all cases. Still, there are times when recourse to the legal system should be set aside in favor of recourse to natural law and justice. The terrorization of the people of Iran by the clerical regime there seems to merit something of the sort. If it can be swept away by purely peaceful and democratic means, all the better. If not, I would look forward to seeing the feet of a number of cold-blooded murderers kicking as they dangle from the same ropes from which they tortured their victims to death. (And I should point out that being hung by the neck until dead is quite often an extraordinarily gruesome and cruel form of death.)
That is wise and the best approach in almost all cases. Still, there are times when recourse to the legal system should be set aside in favor of recourse to natural law and justice. The terrorization of the people of Iran by the clerical regime there seems to merit something of the sort. If it can be swept away by purely peaceful and democratic means, all the better. If not, I would look forward to seeing the feet of a number of cold-blooded murderers kicking as they dangle from the same ropes from which they tortured their victims to death. (And I should point out that being hung by the neck until dead is quite often an extraordinarily gruesome and cruel form of death.)
2 Things
-Just out of curiosity, while I don’t doubt you, is there any evidence that “Furthermore, Iranians have stated that the issue of rape is raised in cases of consensual sex in order to avoid shame (and execution) for one of the parties and to further justify death for those charged. The lawlessness, cruelty, and pure evil of the Iranian clerical regime should be exposed for all the world to see.”?
Second, regarding hanging, it’s theoretically SUPPOSED to be a quick death-the condemned’s neck breaks as the trap door or whatever is releaded-instead of a slow death.
Adam,
There is certainly evidence that people have said that, since you can read interviews in which they say it (one of the pieces quoted a fellow saying just that), and that is evidence that it may be true. (Evidence is not the same as dispositive proof; but it’s evidence, nonetheless.)
Second, I’d recommend reading some accounts of hangings. It can be quick, although the snapping of the neck doesn’t guarantee a quick death. But quite frequently it’s not quick at all, and the death experienced by the doomed is excruciatingly horrible. When I die, I certainly don’t want to die like that. If I die a violent death, I can certainly think of a lot of violent deaths far better and far more dignified than hanging.
Third, people who would eagerly hang juveniles for a crime certainly deserve the same fate. That’s especially true of a crime that doesn’t involve murder. The fanatical mullahs who have terrorized the people of Iran in the name of their modernist view of Islam should be worried that they may indeed face similar fates when the Iranian people regain power from the fanatics who have hijacked their country. I hope that cooler heads like Brian’s will prevail, but sometimes the only way to get rid of tyrants is to kill them. And for the murder of the Bahais and other “apostates” and “heretics,” for the oppression and murder of gay people, for the executions of regime enemies, and the like, they richly deserve it.
“[Saddam Husssein & sons] who have terrorized the people of [Iraq] in the name of their [neo-fascist, secular view] of Islam should be worried that they may indeed face similar fates when the [Iraqi] people regain power from the fanatics who have hijacked their country. I hope that cooler heads like Brian’s will prevail, but sometimes the only way to get rid of tyrants is to kill them.”
Works well, I think. It doesn’t necessarily justify the U.S. incursion into Iraq, but offers a suggestive counterfactual: if the prospects for a successful de novo indigenous uprising in a country such as Iraq is poor, are libertarians who support the ends but not the means to liberation engaging in a moral Ulysses contract?
Is the author of the comment above suggesting that my real motive is to start a war and invade Iran? That is the approach of the authors of “Empire,” Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, who insist that anyone who ever criticizes a foreign government for violating human rights is in fact an imperialist. It doesn’t follow. If you think that the Mexican government is oppressing Indians in Chiapas by denying them property rights or that the government of Belarus is suppressing dissent (and property rights) and speak out on those issues, it doesn’t follow that you want the U.S. Marines in Mexico City or Minsk. Further, going down that road leads to anti-libertarianism, since any criticism of a rights violation would be war mongering. But then, wars are objectionable because…they lead to rights violations. So you’re trapped in a circle of illogic that is initiated by the premise that a criticism of a rights violation is ipso facto an argument for war.
I’m not suggesting that legitimate criticism of human rights violations entails a commitment to inevitably backing up such criticisms with military force. And the Negri/Hardt position is a cynical moral nihilism in the service of a bloodstained and bankrupt political tradition. But (back to the point) were it not for the invasion of Iraq, it is highly unlikely that the laudable reforms underway would have occured.
The same can’t be said of Iran, where a young, vibrant, dissident community committed to freedom and the rule of law exists and flourishes, as compared to pre-invasion Iraq. To answer your question, I’m not impugning any motives to you as regards Iran, (or Chiapas, etc.). What I’m suggesting is that in a situation in which indigenous reform movements are routinely and brutally suppressed without any plausible possibility of flourishing, and indeed it is the policy of the government to routinely murder its own citizens on a mass scale, war may be the only alternative to merely speaking truth to power, even for libertarians. A last resort….not a first, and certainly not a condition for the right to criticize human rights violations.
RE Adam: Second, regarding hanging, it’s theoretically SUPPOSED to be a quick death-the condemned’s neck breaks as the trap door or whatever is releaded-instead of a slow death.
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That’s not how they do it in Iran. They practice suspension hanging. Slow death by strangulation.