Hello everyone,
this is my first blog post so I apologise if the entry sounds amateurish or anything like that.
My question is, in Iran we’re fighting for a secular democracy. However, do you believe that there are certain rules that have to be implemented no matter what?
The reason I ask is that at my university me and some fellow Iranian students created a commitee called “Students Association for Democracy in Iran” and our job was to raise awareness in our town and university about what is going on in Iran right now. There was a rally for human rights in Iran that we were organising and my job was to create a short message to say before the rally itself to talk about our organisations and our demads [as Iranian people]. So I wrote about our organisation and the day that we were rallying on and what our demands were. I brought it to the other members to show and some disagreed with some rights. For example, I wrote “we demand complete and total equality for all regardless of gender or sexual orientation”. Many said we should take the “sexual orientation” out because “that’s not what they’re fighting and dying for” and “that’s too much to ask for right now” [The rally was in November by the way].
I also wrote “an immediate halt to all executions, torture and detaining of political prisoners”. They suggested that I add to the end “without a fair trial”. Since when do we legislate torture and execution in a fair trial?!
I have introduced myself to other members [sometimes rather hot-headedly and I apologise for that] on this website as a Turkmen, but I haven’t talked about queer rights yet. I’m “gay” and obviously the majority of Iranian people do not agree with anything outside the heterosexual norm. However, if our revolution is to succeed and we do obtain a secular democracy for Iran, should we include legislation to say “complete and total equality for all regardless of gender or sexual orientation”, even though most Iranians would disagree on the last part? I’m not asking for anything like gay marriage [yet] but I think we should at least have civil unions. Or what about executions? Many people would like to see the mullahs killed and/or tortured. Does Iran really need the death penalty or torture? Are we fighting for human rights or are we fighting for any other government, no matter what it may be?
Given the majority of Iranians disagree with anything outside the heterosexual norm and given that many [maybe not most] want to see the mullahs endure physical pain, does the new government of Iran have the right to push these rights on a populace that disagrees with them? Or should things like equality and no torture be “voted in”?
In my opinion human rights can never be voted in. My right to not be killed on the street for kissing a guy or my right to have access to employment, government benefits and the protection of the law should not be voted in whenever Iranian people feel the need for it to be “appropriate”. In my opinion things like human rights must be implemented onto the populace no matter how much they disagree because these rights are universal and no one can take these rights away from anyone. Who’s to say other rights won’t be taken away? We need to have a standard, either human rights for all or human rights for some.
