| Summary: | "Iranian law reflects the Iranian government's hostile attitude towards sexual minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Iran's penal code criminalizes all sexual relations outside traditional marriage, and specifically bans same-sex conduct, even if it is consensual. Threat of prosecution and serious punishment, including the death penalty, for those convicted of same-sex crimes constitutes discrimination against Iran's vulnerable sexual minorities. This report--based on interviews with more than 125 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Iranians inside and outside Iran over the past five years--documents discrimination and violence against Iran's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population, and others whose sexual practices and gender expression do not conform to the government's socio-religious norms. Human Rights Watch analyzed these abuses within the context of general systematic human rights violations that Iran's government perpetrates against its citizens, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, invasions of privacy, mistreatment and torture of detainees, and lack of due process and fair trial standards. The report also documents instances in which police and members of the hard-line basij paramilitary force--relying upon discriminatory laws to harass, arrest, and detain individuals suspected of being gay--allegedly ill-treated and sometimes tortured real or suspected LGBT people in public spaces and detention facilities. Several interviewees alleged that members of the security forces sexually assaulted or raped them. We are a Buried Generation: Discrimination and Violence Against Sexual Minorities in Iran calls on Iran's government to abolish all laws and other legislation under the Islamic Penal Code that criminalize consensual same-sex conduct, especially those that impose the death penalty, and to cease the harassment, arrest, detention, prosecution, and conviction of sexual minorities and persons who engage in consensual same-sex behavior. Human Rights Watch also calls on authorities to prosecute members of the security force who engage in such actions."--P. [4] of cover.
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