Iranian President ridiculed in protest at lgbt persecution

international | gender and sexuality | other press Monday July 07, 2008 21:54 by pat c

Peter Tatchell takes the mickey out of Iranian "President" Ahmadinejad but also makes it clear that he opposes any attack on Iran. Peter supports the Iranian people not the theocracy. Full text at link.

Peter Tatchell marched in the Pride Parade holding a poster placard ridiculing the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It featured a doctored photo of Amhadinejad wearing blue eye shadow, red lipstick, a gold earring and pink nail varnish. The placard was emblazoned with the words: “President of Iran. Murderer.Homophobe.”

“I don’t support a military-attack on Iran, but I do urge greater international solidarity with democratic, liberal and progressive Iranians who are struggling to overthrow the clerical dictatorship from within,” Peter Tatchell said.

Peter Tatchell at London Pride, Saturday, 5 July, 2008.

“Sometimes the best way to deflate tyrants is by mocking them,” Peter said. “Ahmadinejad leads a regime that arrests, jails, flogs,tortures and sometimes executes gaypeople. It also terrorises trade unionists, students, women activists, journalists, bloggers, Sunni Muslims and ethnic minorities like the Ahwazi Arabs, Baluchs and Kurds."

Speaking from the main stage in Trafalgar Square, Peter Tatchell condemned “President Amadinejad’s violent homophobia”and “the Labour government’s policy of deporting lgbt asylum claimants back to Iran.”

He condemned the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith MP, who last month refused requests for a moratorium on the return of lgbt asylum seekers to Iran. She claimed “the evidence does not show a real risk of discovery of, or adverse action against, lgbt people who are discreet about their sexual orientation. This is complete nonsense and deeply insulting,” said Mr Tatchell. “It is like saying that Jews in Nazi-Germany were safe if they hid their Jewishness.”