Iran’s punishments for homosexuality “peculiarly barbaric”

The British government has granted asylum to an Iranian homosexual due to the danger he would face in his home country, The Times reported on Friday.

Homosexuality is illegal in most Muslim countries, but “Iran’s draconian punishments are peculiarly barbaric,” the article says. Victims are hanged in public from cranes using the method of slow strangulation, designed to cause maximum suffering. Human rights campaigners say that more than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed since 1979, and thousands more have been sentenced to lashes.

According to the article, Iran's criminalization of homosexuality is often a convenient way of punishing political opponents against whom there is little other specific evidence.

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