Below is a groundbreaking open letter from the Homosexual Students of Iran, which was sent to the Student Movement of Iran on the International Day Against Homophobia. Originally written in Farsi, it has now been translated into English (with the help of Mike Foxwell, editor of G&LH) by Saghi Ghahraman.

Homosexual Students of Iran Universities sent an open letter to the Student Movement of Iran, on 15 May, urging the movement to eradicate homophobic behaviour (from ignorance to belittling reactions towards homosexuality and the transgender community); to admit the presence of homosexual students amid the body of the movement; and to include queer community demands in its statements to the government.

The letter addresses the Student Movement in particular, but it doesn’t fail to notice that all social and intellectual movements of Iran today are connected together; therefore, the letter reaches out to other movements, such as women’s, social and human rights, workers and the intellectual movement.

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The letter has been covered in two opposition online newspapers, and one radio station has interviewed the well-known gay essayist and Cheraq magazine’s managing editor, Hmaid Pranian.

The full text of the letter has been translated into English for G&LH with the assistance of Saghi Ghahraman, President of the IRanian Queer Organization (IRQO). We would like to thank him and the Board of Directors of IRQO.

Any organizations or individuals who wish to get in touch with the Homosexual Students of Iran, should do so at the following email address: daneshjooyan.hamjensgera@gmail.com.

The letter is reproduced in full below.

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Homosexual Students’ Letter addressed to Students’ Movement and other Movements of Civil Society

(in accordance with May 17 International Day
Against Homophobia)

Iran’s University Student Movement is seventy years old. Along the years, in the absence of democracy, symbolically, it became a trench for freedom and human-rights activities. On many occasions the movement acted as the enlightening and inspiring force to the Iranian people’s civil campaigns against oppression.

The University Student Movement, during the course of its actions, became affected by the world’s social and political progressive movements and in turn affected people’s thoughts and political beliefs with its findings. The Student Movement has been a pioneer in supporting and defending all other social movements and various deprived minorities, relating to and identifying with their causes. Universities and university students have also been the source of many intellectual and social movements in Iran.

On the International Day Against Homophobia, this letter is addressed to Iranian university students’ activists.

And, since Iranian citizens’ social demands have brought together all human-rights movements in the present day, it is only fitting that the human-rights activists, civil-society activists and intellectuals, and everyone involved in the challenges of raising political awareness among people, be also the recipients of this letter – especially in the midst of presidential election campaigns when everyone is cautious to make sure crucial decisions made today will not embarrass the next generation.

On the International Day Against Homophobia, recipients of this letter are all of whom deeply concerned with the necessity of reforms and improvements in Iran, whose interest is not for office but are anxious and striving for fairness and social justice.

On the other days of the year, Iranian homosexual students stood in line with various student groups, the women’s movement, public demonstrations, civil-rights activists’ protests, and intellectuals’ meetings. Today, this letter addresses our colleagues and friends in the University Student Movement. The student movement must be a safe home for all students regardless of race, religion, language and gender.

Does the student movement still wish to ignore the fact of diversity among students in the body of the movement?

Does the movement still wish to go on pretending there are no homosexual students in Iran?

During the years, we stood by you and we will be staying by your side. If you do not know our names, it is because of our covering up for domineering prejudices and judgements that exist in the inner layers of the student movement that never tolerated homosexuality. Today, after all these years, we believe that, if the leader and the government of Iran claim that we homosexuals do not exist in our own homeland, they are walking in the path of same old prejudiced strategies.

However, our expectation of the student movement, based on the movement’s ideals and guidelines, and our demand, is that the movement should stop denying our existence, should not ignore our presence and should not, indifferently or unknowingly, ignore us and the injustices conducted against us.

We Iranian homosexual students have been working side by side with the student and intellectual movements. We are present in the context of social and political requirements. We are vigorous defenders of change in the unequal and unjust circumstances in Iranian society.

Now that all freedom lovers, kind-hearted and wise individuals and defenders of human rights have come to realise that homosexuals’ rights are human rights – and thus fighting towards their rights is fighting for human rights regardless of colour of skin, religion, social class, gender and sexual orientation, when ignorance of the previous generation towards social oppression and ill-advised political beliefs do not rule any more – we, the homosexual students in a number of universities in Iran, decided to take this moment as the chance to accept our historical mission, to enlighten our people and our classmates against cruelties and harassments still carried out against some of the children of this country.

Homosexuality has been removed from the list of mental disorders for years, and free-minded, free-spirited people in the world have paid political attention to it. One can name many great homosexual people in the world whose sexual orientation did not stop them from adding to the richness of global culture and science.

Also, their sexuality did not bar them from receiving recognition and appreciation in the civilised world. However, in Iran and other unprivileged countries restricted from enjoying social freedom and human rights, homosexuals are condemned to the most barbaric and horrible tortures and harassments and injustices, and yet no one feels obliged to open their eyes to these virtual executions that happen today to Iranian homosexuals.

Even though sexual orientation is innate, and homosexuals, like heterosexuals, do not choose their sexuality but are born with it, Iranian society still blames homosexuals with the “sin” of homosexuality, which is in fact their benign nature.

Friends! Classmates! Homophobia has spread its dark shadow over our private and social life with such intensity that simple breathing has become difficult for us. Our only fault is that we want, like everyone else, to live in accordance with our innate nature.

Our homosexual nature leads us to wish for a partner of the same sex. At the same time, our nature leads us to be a part – an active and responsive part – of society. We believe that we should take on more responsibilities within the student movement and for Iranian citizens’ struggles for freedom, gender equality and social justice, and should be able to exercise the responsibilities we have already been carrying out, with assurance and the confidence of solidarity and tolerance within the student movement.

Is the student movement the shelter for all students regardless of their sexual orientation? This is not a question but a pleading for justice.

We, the Iranian homosexual students, demand that the student movement – for the first time in the modern history of Iran, during these days of a presidential election, with the widespread commotion to eliminate violence against human and civil rights in Iran, and on the day named to advocate homosexuals’ rights – acknowledge the existence of homosexual students in universities of Iran; believe in the presence of homosexual students in the boundless, borderless student movement countrywide; accept the fact of homosexuals’ existence in our society, be aware of the challenges they face, and take necessary steps to initiate and maintain social respect for homosexuals.

After these many years, based on the identity and characteristics of this movement, the assumption is that the movement and its spokespersons, its media and its websites, engage in dialogues about homosexuals, fellow citizens suppressed in their own homeland. We urge the student movement to speak up and step forward to express respect for our rights. We wish to emphasise that it is best and only fair if this step is taken first and foremost by the student movement.

It is a timely question to ask: Why has the student movement turned a blind eye to homosexual students and the harassments they endure in supposedly nonviolent environments?

We, the homosexual students of Iran, urge the body of the student movement to take a scrutinising look at gender- and sexuality-based policies the Islamic Republic of Iran conducts; and to include critics of these policies in their requirements. We are certain that reforming and improving of these policies will be beneficial to all social groups in our country and will result in liberation.

We, the homosexual students of Iran, urge you, our sisters and brothers in all political and social movements who are suffering from such laws consisting of severe intolerance and ignorance of the individual’s very right to live, to include, in that vision you see for our country’s future, respect for all human beings notwithstanding diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity, and an appreciation of divergences in human beings.

This requirement is specifically set forth in a manner of grave urgency and insistence because, in the few extensive students’ requirement-based statements, Iran’s LGBT community’s rights haven’t been mentioned once, not in university-based requirements, not in massive social and political requirements, and not even in the Ten Requirements and the Twenty Requirements.

If those identifying themselves as student movement activists are not able to act responsibly towards the absence of LGBT rights in the sphere of political and religious alternative thinkers’ rights in their statements, they must await the day when they too – like the present governing body of Iran – partake in acts of prejudice and violence against diversity and deny equality and social justice.

During the days when People’s Requirements have brought together civil movements in Iran and are blurring borders between the civil, intellectual, students’ and women’s movements, the population of homosexuals in Iran – who have been furthering their serious and systematic struggle for over 20 years under harsh conditions and with the slightest of opportunities and in the bloodiest eras – have been stripped of the merest security and privacy, be it personal or social; and, aside from their expectations from the students’ movement, ask other movements of Iranian society, too, to acknowledge the presence of homosexuals among themselves and pay concerned attention to the absence of homosexual rights.

Let’s learn together in the course of social and political movements that human rights are common and universal rights in which exclusiveness and divisionism is the first instance of digression from the notion of freedom.

In order to learn, and teach in return, what we expect at this level from the student movement is as follows:

to raise awareness among students and in society as a whole of the importance and urgency of respect and consideration for all sexual minority groups;

to cover news regarding harassments, arrests, beatings, persecutions, rape, disrespect to human dignity, and violations of the rights of homosexual students, in universities and at the hands of security officials, administrative and educational officials, and other students; to publish this news in the movements’ media and news channels (websites, bulletins, student newspapers etc.);

to Include in their programmes and campaigns serious critics of government politics regarding suppression of homosexuals and other sexual-minority groups’ rights, discriminatory and unjust laws and regulations concerning sexual minorities in civil laws and penal codes of the country;

to Include in their programmes and campaigns organising seminars associated with and related to sexuality at large; bring forward discourses in relation to raising awareness about sexuality; publish articles regarding sexual orientation and gender identity; bring forward issues in relation to the human and civil rights of homosexuals and other branches of sexual orientation and gender identity;

to choose constructive projects in raising awareness about the urgency of respect for homosexuals and other sexual minority groups;

to practise respect in their deeds and manners, and dispose of discriminatory and oppressive traditions concerning sexual orientation; criticise homophobic conduct and open doors to include as many homosexual students as possible in the body of the student movement and related civil movements.

Homosexual students’ generous and patient understanding of the obstacles and political barriers faced by the student movement shouldn’t be interpreted as acceptance of discrimination and intolerance coming from the student movement towards homosexual students and the LGBT community.

The day will come when all women, workers, children, students, homosexuals, religious, language and ethnic minorities and all Iranians are able to live freely in their own country and not have to suffer inhumane and meaningless social, political and economic barriers. The day will come when the dignity of every human being is well guarded and well respected.

In the Name of Freedom

Homosexual Students of:

University of Political Law and science Tehran University;

University of Literature and Social Sciences Tehran University;

University of Fine Arts Tehran University;

Industrial University of Amir Kabir;

Free University Central Tehran Unit;

Free Islamic University;

Free University Science and Research Unit;

University of Shahhid Rejaee’s Teachers’ Training College;

Industrial University of Sharif;

Technical University of Shahid Chamran, City of Kerman;