Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
محتویات
پیوند به صفحه فارسی
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad statements about homosexuals
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEPTEMBER 24, 2007
(only parts of speech that are related to statements about homosexuals are included below)
MR. BOLLINGER: ...and so I ask you, why have women, members of the Baha'i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?...
MR. COATSWORTH: ... Mr. President, another student asks, Iranian women are now denied basic human rights, and your government has imposed draconian punishments, including execution on Iranian citizens who are homosexuals. Why are you doing those things?
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Those in Iran are genuine true freedoms. The Iranian people are free. Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedoms. We have two deputy vice -- well, two vice presidents that are female at the highest levels of speciality; specialized (roles ?) in our parliament and our government and our universities, they are present in our biotechnological fields and our technological fields. There are hundreds of women scientists that are active in the political realm as well.
It's not -- it's wrong for some governments, when they disagree with another government, to sort of -- try to spread lies that distort the full truth. Our nation is free. It has the highest level of participation in elections. In Iran, 80 percent -- 90 percent of the people turn out for votes during the elections, half of which -- over half of which are women, so how can we say that women are not free? Is that the entire truth?
But as for the executions, I'd like to raise two questions. If someone comes and establishes a network for illicit drug trafficking that affects the (use ?) in Iran, Turkey, Europe, the United States by introducing these illicit drugs and destroys them, would you ever reward them? People who lead the lives -- cause the deterioration of the lives of hundreds of millions of youth around the world, including in Iran, can we have any sympathy to them? Don't you have capital punishment in the United States? You do, too. (Applause.)
In Iran, too, there's capital punishment for illicit drug traffickers, for people who violate the rights of people.
If somebody takes up a gun, goes into a house, kills a group of people there, and then tries to take ransom, how would you confront them in Iran with -- in the United States? Would you reward them? Can a physician allow microbes, symbolically speaking, to spread across a nation? We have laws. People who violate the public rights of the people by using guns, killing people, creating insecurity, sell drugs, distribute drugs at a high level are sentenced to execution in Iran, and some of these punishments -- very few are carried in the public eye, before the public eye. It's a law based on democratic principles. You use injections and microbes to kill these people, and they are executed or they're hung, but the end result is killing.
MR. COATSWORTH: (Off mike) -- and drug smugglers. The question was about sexual preference and women. (Applause.)
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. (Laughter.) We don't have that in our country. (Booing.) In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it. (Laughter.)
But as for women, maybe you think that being a woman is a crime. It's not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran. In Iran, every family who's given a girl is given -- in every Iranian family who has a girl, they're 10 times happier than having a son. Women are respected more than men are. They are exempt from many responsibilities. Many of the legal responsibilities rest on the shoulders of men in our society because of the respect culturally given to women, to the future mothers. In Iranian culture, men and sons and girls constantly kiss the hands of their mothers as a sign of respect, a respect for women, and we are proud of this culture.
Responses to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad statements
Reuters - Iran's president was misrepresented by Western media
TEHRAN | Wed Oct 10, 2007
President misquoted over gays in Iran: aide
(Reuters) - Iran's president was misrepresented by Western media when he was quoted saying there were no gays in Iran, and actually meant there were not so many as in the United States, a presidential aide said on Wednesday.
Addressing New York's Columbia University last month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied to a question about gays in the Islamic Republic saying: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."
Speaking through a translator, he also said: "In Iran we don't have this phenomenon."
The remarks drew widespread criticism in the West.
Homosexuality is punishable by death in the Islamic Republic.
"What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer. He said that, compared to American society, we don't have many homosexuals," presidential media adviser Mohammad Kalhor said.
Kalhor told Reuters that because of historical, religious and cultural differences homosexuality was less common in Iran and the Islamic world than in the West.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said in May the last person known "with reasonable certainty" to have been sentenced to execution in Iran for consensual homosexual conduct was in 2005. But it did not know if the sentence had been carried out. <ref>Reuters Oct 10, 2007</ref>
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