UN Report: Iran's Treatment of LGBTQ Youth is 'Torture'
A new UN report says that Iran's government has inflicted electroshock "torture" on LGBTQ children, along with psychoactive drugs and hormone therapy, apparently in the belief that these procedures would "cure" them, the Jerusalem Post reports.
The Post said that in the report, Javaid Rehman, who serves as the UN Special Rapporteur for the Islamic Republic of Iran, expressed concern at practices reportedly employed by the theocratic state that "amount to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and violate the State's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child."
The report went on to condemn Iran's alleged anti-LGBTQ actions with unsparing language, saying that sexual minorities in that country "experience human rights violations and widespread discrimination.
"Senior officials describe the community in hateful terms, including by labelling individuals as 'subhuman' and 'diseased,' " the report added.
The use of electric shocks has been alleged by survivors of so-called "reparative therapy" in the United States, as have other types of "aversion therapy" that have purportedly been used on LGBTQ American children, such as the application of ice or hot coils to the hands of young victims in order to inflict suffering.
British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell blasted Iran, saying that the report was "a shocking revelation" of abuses that "echo anti-LGBT+ medical treatments by the Nazis and other fascist regimes."
Tatchell went on to say that the report "confirms systemic persecution of women, LGBTs, human rights defenders, regime critics, trade unionists and ethnic and religious minorities."
The UN report noted that the torments and procedures allegedly used on children are not the worst of that LGBTQ people face under the Iranian government. "The death penalty can be imposed for consensual sexual activity between members of the same sex in the Islamic Republic of Iran," the report recalled.