Nov. 14
IRAN:
Iran's Transsexual Revolution
An unlikely religious ruling has made Tehran the sex-change capital of the
world. Caroline Mangez went to meet the brave souls who have swapped
gender in this rigidly conservative city, where women wear the chador and
homosexuality is punishable by death...
"I know because I've experienced both worlds: as a man in Iran I have more
freedom and choice than as a woman," muses 30 year-old estate agent Milad
Kajouhinejad, 30, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a
hirsute chest. It gives him pleasure, this manly gesture, just as it gives
him pleasure to carry an attach case and sport the full beard of a
practising Muslim. Until three years ago, he could do none of these
things. "I never used to go to the mosque, either," he adds. "I did not
want to have to wear a chador. Now I can pray in boxer shorts if I feel
like it, and I never miss prayers," he says.
Milad gives thanks to Allah 5 times a day and, while doing so, always
offers a special prayer to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, "without
whom," he says, "every transexual would have had to leave Iran. He was the
first to issue a fatwa authorising a man or woman to change their sex."
More than 15 years after Khomeini's death, the cleric's unlikely religious
judgement means that Iran now has one of the world's largest populations
of transexuals, and the fatwa itself has become the stuff of legend. "A
theology student told me that he delivered his verdict after he was
contacted by a couple who no longer experienced any physical pleasure. He
advised them to change sex and, once the woman had become a man and the
man a woman, then to remarry," says Mahnaz Javaheri, 42, the mother of
Athena, a 20-year-old who, as she puts it, "needed to be freed of her
man's body." A devout Muslim, Mahnaz says that if the three imams she
consulted hadn't given their permission, she would never have let her son
Hadi become Athena, "even if it meant him committing suicide. These three
great ayatollahs all said that he should have the operation as soon as
possible."
The real story behind Khomeini's fatwa is scarcely less dramatic than the
apocryphal version. He issued it in 1983, after a man named Fereydoon, who
had made several unsuccessful attempts to gain an audience with the
Iranian leader, eventually forced his way into Khomeini's private rooms.
Fereydoon persuaded the cleric that he was a woman trapped in as man's
body by revealing the breasts he had grown thanks to a course of hormone
treatment.
Before this extraordinary moment, Khomeini's administration had routinely
harassed and arrested transexuals, lumping them together with Iran's gay
community. According to Iranian law, homosexuality is punished by
lashings, prison and even, in the case of persistent offenders, the death
penalty.
"Before Khomeini delivered his verdict, there was a lot of corruption.
Hundreds of gays and lesbians used to meet in Laleh Park, right in the
heart of Tehran. By authorising transexuals to change sex, the imam
separated the wheat from the chaff," Milad says pragmatically, delighted
to be the man he always felt he was back in the days when he was a she
called Mahboubeh, "the beloved." The only traces of this other life are 2
minuscule pinkish piercings in his ears, where his mother Fatima used to
try and get him to wear earrings, and the black-and-white photograph in
their family album which shows Mahboubeh, aged three, crying because her
hair has been put in bunches.
"All the restrictions that women in Iran are subject to applied to me,"
says Milad. "I wasn't allowed to go out, let alone consult a doctor about
my problems, and of course I had to wear the veil in public. I used to
hide boy's clothes in my satchel to play with the kids in the street after
school."
He sees the past as a procession of bad memories - with one or two
compensations. "I was a big hit with the girls in my class. They came from
strict families, so it was a chance for them to have a boyfriend without
seeming to be up to anything."
"Yes, they knew we couldn't take what was most precious to them, their
virginity," concurs Amin, 28, formerly Milan's best friend at school, who
has also undergone a sex-change operation. "So they were very relaxed. No
one ever made fun of us. In Iran, a man who behaves like a woman is
despised, looked down on. But a girl who behaves and dresses like a man is
respected for her strong character."
Mahboubeh was nine when her father, a long-distance lorry driver, caught
her in a clinch with one of her girlfriends. He didn't say anything but
was convinced that his daughter was turning into a homosexual. In 1986, to
"awaken" Mahboubeh's femininity, her parents forcibly married her to a
30-year-old cousin. She was only 12 but, on the eve of her wedding, a
state doctor confirmed that she was an "adult woman" by establishing that
she had breasts and was menstruating. After being raped, she ran away.
"After the police took me back to my father, he agreed to let me get a
divorce when I told him that otherwise I would commit suicide," he says.
Some years later, at university, Mahboubeh discovered a book on
transexuals in the library - and with it the existence of Milad within
her. Since Iran's clergy prides itself on its ability to pronounce on
every aspect of the faithful's lives, it was to them that she turned.
"First I saw a state doctor and then, for a year and a half, I was passed
between experts and psychiatrists. I was given hundreds of tests, a brain
scan. In the end, a clerical judge gave permission for my operation."
"On grounds of sexual identity disorder," the accompanying medical
certificate reads.
At this point, the young woman, who was by then 26, was rejected by her
parents. "We needed someone to prepare us," her father says now, "to
explain that afterwards we wouldn't be able to see any difference between
him and other men."
"We didn't like it at first," explains Fatima, the mother who Milad still
helps in her kitchen - unlike the other 3 sons in her now-reconciled
family. "My family threw me out," recalls Milad. "I had to find money ...
I drove a taxi from 6 in the morning to midnight. The rest of the time I
slept in my car."
The procedure took years and cost thousands of pounds, between 2 and 3
times as much as the 2,000 an Iranian surgeon charges for turning a man
into a woman. "I applied to the committee of imam Khomeini's charity for
financial assistance which they give to people, well, to people like me.
They give us interest-free loans up to 700."
Milad had read on the internet that four operations would be enough. Skin
grafts, nerve grafts, muscle grafts - he has had 23 operations in three
years and will have the last one before the end of the year. "My surgeon,
Dr Khatir, has done such a good job that soon a woman won't notice a
thing," he says. "He is a pioneer. He was doing this before the
revolution. I am the only person in Iran, and perhaps in the world, to
have gone as far, medically speaking. The last operation was the hardest
..." 2 bouts of 4 hours at a time on the operating table; his friends
crying in the corridor, him thinking he was dying, saying his final
prayers, a scarf clamped between his teeth to stop him screaming, and
which he only took out to tell Dr Khatir, "Go on, I'd rather die than stay
a woman."
Milad still saves all his money to spend on removing his unwanted
femininity. "My birth certificate, my identity card and my driving licence
were changed when I stopped being a woman, in 2001. For the deep voice,
the build, the beard, there are the hormones ... I'll be taking them all
my life." Milad, who claims to have as much success with women now as
before, wears a wedding ring "so they don't hassle me. When I've finished
all the operations and I have enough money, I'll think about marriage."
Amin, who is still Milad's best friend, is already engaged. He is a
respected member of the Guardians of the Revolution, a very strict
military organisation; no one there knows about his operation. "No one in
my wife-to-be's family knows my former identity either," he says. "All
trace of it has been erased. I would be too afraid that they would object
to our marriage. Everyone in my family was fine about it until my father
died. But since my 2 sisters learnt that, under sharia law, as the only
male heir of the family I was entitled to twice their share of the
inheritance, they have refused to see me."
In male-dominated Iran, girls who have the misfortune to be born in a
boy's body are a laughing stock. Setareh, now a 24-year-old woman, has
first-hand experience of this from the 2 years' military service she had
to do when still called Saeed. "Life in barracks was agony. While I felt
more and more like a woman, I was being ordered to speak in a deeper
voice, to be more masculine. To stop people making fun of me, I ended up
wanting to look like a Hizbollah fighter, growing my beard long and trying
twice as hard in training. It was in the army that I fell in love with
Ali, the day he fought with 3 soldiers who were trying to rape me at
knifepoint. I was 19, he was nearly 21. It was Ali who encouraged me to
set about changing sex so that I could marry him."
They have persuaded Ali's parents that Setareh is the sister of the Saeed
they used to know. "Every time my parents-in-law ask me about Saaed, I
blush and say he has gone on a long trip," says Setareh, who never takes
off her chador. "Ali insists I wear one, just as he likes me to devote
myself to housework." Giving pleasure without being able to feel it - "I
was warned" - Setareh is perfectly reconciled to her lot.
With one eye glued to a religious chat show, Magnaz, the mother of
20-year-old transexual Athena Javaheri recalls: "At first we thought this
odd idea of dressing as a woman came from his grandmother who loved
dressing him up as a girl and getting him to dance."
Now, she says her main concern is whether her former son will be able to
give her any grandchildren.
Athena has torn all the pictures of her as a little boy out of the family
album. In the photographs from the 1960s, her father Hussein, who is 52
now, looks like Jim Morrison. Twenty 5 years of revolution, however, have
made him a conventional man who doesn't let Athena go out without a
chador.
"I couldn't accept it," he says, "my only son! I beat him until he tried
to commit suicide. Then the doctors had to explain to me that he wasn't
homosexual before I would agree to the operation."
According to some transexuals, their legal status in Iranian society has
prompted hundreds of gay Iranians to apply for permission for sex-changes,
which, if granted, would allow them to continue their relationship without
fear of arrest. "The best psychiatrists don't make any distinction between
a transexual and a homosexual," claims Amin. "So, if you're a woman, you
just have to go the chemist and inject yourself with testosterone to
obtain a permit to be operated on. Many women then have a bit of breast
reduction to be able to indulge their deviancy. When they get arrested,
the permit is a big help."
But legal recognition is not the same as social acceptance. Transexuals in
Iran continue to suffer not just ostracism, but physical attacks. For
every happily assimilated Milad and Athena, there are newly made men and
women on the streets of Tehran who can never reveal the truth that lies
behind their chador or business suit.
(source: The Independent (UK) )
LIBYA/BULGARIA:
Bulgarian nurses' appeal decision due----Daughter: 'I cannot afford not to
hope.
Antoaneta Uzunova was waiting in anguish Tuesday to hear if her mother
will face a Libyan firing squad.
A Palestinian doctor and 5 condemned Bulgarian nurses, including Uzunova's
mother, face a hearing in Libya on Tuesday on their appeal of a May 2004
conviction on charges that they intentionally infected more than 400
patients at a children's hospital with the AIDS virus.
"It's been terrible. ... The charges were absurd then, they remain absurd
now," Uzunova said.
Her mother was hired in 1998 to work at al-Fateh Hospital in the Libyan
city of Benghazi. In 1999, all 6 were taken into custody. They eventually
were convicted of infecting the children as part of an experiment to find
a cure for AIDS and sentenced to death by firing squad.
International human rights groups say the 5 women were tortured into
confessing. The United States and European governments also are stepping
up pressure for their release.
The nurses originally were charged with conspiring against the Libyan
state as part of a plot sponsored by the CIA and Israel's Mossad
intelligence agencies -- charges later dropped.
"When I heard them being described as CIA agents ... I knew what would
happen," said Uzunova, 28. "Then we found out our loved ones had been
tortured in a most cruel way. It's a nightmare."
Accusations of torture, rape
Amnesty International cited detailed accounts from the women of torture,
sometimes daily, with electric shocks, threats and severe beatings. 2 of
the nurses said they had been raped, according to Amnesty.
A decision on the appeal was expected Tuesday.
Bulgarian Justice Minister Georgi Petkanov said Monday he hoped the Libyan
court would order a retrial for the nurses and the doctor.
"This court has two options -- to confirm the conviction, or to overturn
it and to order a retrial," Petkanov told private Nova TV. "I hope they
would choose the latter."
According to Petkanov, a possible retrial would last six months to a year.
If the verdicts are confirmed, the sentence could be carried out
immediately.
Velislava Dareva, from the Bulgarian group Association 17/26, which has
led the campaign for the nurses' release, said she believed rights groups'
claims that Libya fabricated the charges to cover up unsafe practices at
its hospitals and clinics.
"Both our nurses and the sick children are hostages," she said. "It's
clear the children are victims of Libya's health care system."
Expert: Children infected before nurses' arrival
During last year's trial in Benghazi, French Professor Luc Montagnier --
the co-discoverer of HIV -- testified that the infection had spread in the
children's hospital before the Bulgarians arrived.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said relations with
Libya hinge on the fate of Bulgarian nurses.
And last month, U.S. President Bush warned: "There should be no confusion
in the Libyan government's mind that those nurses ought to be not only
spared ... but out of prison."
Bulgaria has rejected a suggestion by Libyan officials that the nurses
could be spared the death penalty if the Bulgarian government paid
compensation to the families of the AIDS victims.
"Who will pay for the torture, for the years of pain the nurses have
suffered?" said Bulgarian lawmaker Evgeni Kirilov, who has campaigned for
the nurses' release.
Uzunova said her mother, Valya Chervenyashka, agrees.
"She's been through such terrible things. she's the victim after all."
But she said she fears her mother's ordeal will not be over on Tuesday.
"I don't think it will end with the appeals hearing ... but I cannot
afford not to hope."
(source: Associated Press)
**********************
Foreign Health Workers Describe Torture
Libya's Supreme Court should consider the torture claims of 6 foreign
medical workers on death row for injecting 426 Libyan children with HIV,
Human Rights Watch said. The court will review the case today.
4 of the 6 defendants, 5 Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, told
Human Rights Watch in May that they confessed after enduring torture,
including beatings, electric shock and sexual assault.
Libyan officials denied all of the defendants prompt access to a lawyer,
they said. In June, a Tripoli court acquitted 10 Libyan security officials
accused of using torture against the defendants.
"There are credible allegations of torture against the foreign health
workers," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director
of Human Rights Watch. "The Libyan Supreme Court should take these facts
into account and reject the death sentences."
Today the Supreme Court can accept the death sentences or return the case
to a lower court. It can also postpone reviewing the case, as it has done
before.
Libyan authorities arrested the Bulgarians and Palestinian in February
1999, and charged them with purposely infecting 426 children with HIV. The
children were patients in the al-Fath Children's Hospital in Benghazi. A
Benghazi court sentenced the foreign health workers to death by firing
squad in May 2004. 9 Libyans who worked at the hospital were acquitted.
At least 50 of the children infected with HIV have died, and the case has
deeply angered the Libyan public.
"The plight of these innocent children is a tragedy," Whitson said.
"But their suffering should not impede justice or lead to more abuse."
Luc Montagnier, the co-discoverer of the HIV virus, testified in the trial
that the children were probably infected as a result of poor hygiene at
the hospital, and that many of the children had been infected with HIV
before the arrival of the foreign health workers in 1998.
But Libyan medical experts for the prosecution claimed the infections
resulted from intentional injections of the AIDS virus by the Bulgarian
and Palestinian medical workers. The prosecution claims the defendants
confessed to their crime.
4 of the foreign health workers told Human Rights Watch that interrogators
subjected them to electric shocks, beatings to the body with cables and
wooden sticks, and beatings on the soles of their feet, in order to
extract their confessions. In May, Human Rights Watch interviewed the
foreign health workers in Tripoli's Jadida prison.
"I confessed during torture with electricity. They put small wires on my
toes and on my thumbs. Sometimes they put one on my thumb and another on
either my tongue, neck or ear," Valentina Siropulo, one of the Bulgarian
defendants, told Human Rights Watch. "They had 2 kinds of machines, one
with a crank and one with buttons."
Another Bulgarian defendant, Kristiana Valceva, said interrogators used a
small machine with cables and a handle that produced electricity.
"During the shocks and torture they asked me where the AIDS came from and
what is your role," she told Human Rights Watch. She said that Libyan
interrogators subjected her to electric shocks on her breasts and
genitals.
"My confession was all in Arabic without translation," she said. "We were
ready to sign anything just to stop the torture."
The 5 Bulgarian nurses are being held in a special wing of Jadida prison,
where they now get regular visits from their lawyers and Bulgarian
officials. The Palestinian doctor, Ashraf Ahmad Jum'a, is in the men's
section of the prison by himself in the wing for those on death row.
"We had barbaric, sadistic torture for a crime we didn't do," Jum'a told
Human Rights Watch during an interview conducted in the presence of a
prison guard. "They used electric shocks, drugs, beatings, police dogs,
sleep prevention."
"The confession was like multiple choice, and when I gave a wrong answer
they shocked me," he said. He claimed that the defendants were also forced
to shock each other.
Human Rights Watch also interviewed one of the 10 Libyan security
officials tried in June for using torture against the foreign health
workers. Jummia al-Mishri, a lead investigator in the case and one of the
torture defendants, insisted that Jum'a had confessed willingly. He
claimed that investigators had found 2 bottles with the HIV virus in
Kristiana Valcheva's house.
Al-Mishri argued that the foreign health workers had complained of torture
3 years after their arrest, suggesting that they concocted the claims. But
Jum'a told Human Rights Watch that he and the other defendants complained
of torture during their 1st court session in 2000, but the judge dismissed
the complaint. The court also denied them a lawyer until their 1st day in
court, the foreign health workers said.
On June 7, a Tripoli court acquitted al-Mishri and the 9 other Libyan
security officials -7 policemen, a doctor and a translator - accused of
torturing the foreign health workers.
The Benghazi AIDS case has become an international affair. Both the
European Union and the United States are involved in negotiations between
the Libyan and Bulgarian governments. Top Libyan officials have suggested
the defendants could be pardoned if Bulgaria paid compensation to the
families of the victim. But the Bulgarian government has refused the offer
because it implies an admission of guilt.
On November 10, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the Libyan leader's influential son
and the head of the Qaddafi Foundation, said he did not believe the
foreign medical workers were guilty. His foundation has helped secure the
defendants better conditions in prison.
Human Rights Watch is also appealing for ongoing medical aid for the
Libyan children infected with HIV. The Association for Child Victims of
Aids in Benghazi told Human Rights Watch in May that 19 mothers of these
children are also infected with the virus.
"Tell the world that these children are innocent and suffering," Ramadan
al-Faturi, the association's spokesman told Human Rights Watch. He
demanded better training for Libyan doctors and psychological support for
the families.
***
Human Rights Watch has exclusive photos of the Bulgarian health workers.
To reproduce these photos, free of charge, please visit our website at:
http://hrw.org/photos/2005/libya1105/
(source: Human Rights Watch)
