A court has found two Iranian women guilty of “corruption on earth”. It is probably the first death sentence in Iran against homosexual women.
For Iranian moral guardians, much that affects the female body is a question of morality. Photo: Tehran, July 9, 2022.
“We risk our lives for our feelings,” says Zahra Sedighi Hamedani in a tired voice in a selfie video in October 2021. The 30-year-old lesbian woman, who campaigns for LGBTQ rights in Iran on social networks, says she will leave Iran in the next hour to be smuggled into Turkey. “If I don’t arrive, it’s clear what happened.” As she speaks into the camera, she already suspects what is about to happen to her.
Activist Sedighi Hamedani shortly before her arrest in October 2021.
The LGBTQ activist actually does not manage to get to safety in Turkey. On October 27, 2021, she was arrested by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. There was no sign of life from her for more than fifty days. Amnesty International and other organizations demand their release. Without success.
A few days ago, the Iranian judiciary found Sedighi Hamedani guilty of “corruption on earth” – the most serious charge in Iran’s legal system, which is usually raised for violations of Islamic law. The verdict is the death penalty.
First death sentence against lesbian women
In addition to Sedighi Hamedani, the court in the northwestern city of Urmia also sentenced 24-year-old LGBTQ activist Elham Chobdar to death. The two women have the right to appeal the verdict. According to the Germany-based Iranian LGBTQ organization 6Rang, it is the first time a woman has been sentenced to death in Iran because of her sexual orientation.
Accordingly, the women are accused of having propagated homosexuality and Christianity and having communicated with media hostile to Iran. The Iranian judiciary upheld the death sentences, but the state news agency Irna cited the reason that the women had trafficked in human beings. Iranian authorities often use this accusation to take action against people because of their sexual identity.
Arrested in northern Iraq
The disaster began for Zahra Sedighi Hamedani in spring 2021 in northern Iraq, where she lived at the time. After she spoke about the mistreatment of LGBTQ people in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in a BBC documentary, the Kurdish domestic intelligence agency Asayish notes them and held her in a prison for almost three weeks.
Zahra Sedighi Hamedani
“The 21 days felt like 21 years,” says Sedighi Hamedani in the video, which the organization 6Rang published. After being released on bail, she fled to her home in northwestern Iran, from where she planned to flee to Turkey.
Since her arrest at the Turkish border ten months ago, she has never been able to speak to a lawyer, criticize human rights organizations. In addition, security forces insulted her, threatened her with execution and warned her that she could lose custody of her two children.
Almost 35,000 people signed an online petition, calling for Sedighi Hamedani’s release. But this is unlikely to have much effect: homosexuality is forbidden in Iran, and the penal code expressly criminalizes same-sex sexual acts for men and women.
Iran is so crackdown on sexual orientations that go against the traditional family image that it’s considered one of the most dangerous countries for LGBTQ people. There are no reliable figures, but homosexual men in particular are repeatedly sentenced to death and executed. As recently as February, two gay men were hanged in a prison.
Zahra Sedighi Hamedani says in the video: “I hope that one day we can all live freely in our own country.” She may now lose her life in Iran for this wish.