Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose short movie ‘Submission’ and its scenes of near-naked women outraged Muslims, said her sequel will focus on gays and Islam.
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Friday, November 25, 2005
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script for the short movie “Submission” that outraged Muslims and led to the murder of its director, says her sequel will deal with gays and Islam. “In the movie, [gays] are called God’s creatures,” Hirsi Ali said in an interview published last week. Unlike the first movie that was broadcast on Dutch television, the film will carry no credits and the actors will not be recognizable, she told the Volkskrant daily. A Muslim fanatic murdered the director of the first film, Theo van Gogh, one year ago. The film was a fictional study of women suffering abuse in Muslim households, and used scenes of near-naked women that some Muslims found deeply offensive. Van Gogh’s killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, was sentenced to life in prison. It was unclear when and where the sequel would be shown, but Hirsi Ali said she hoped it too would be aired on national television. The first film hasn’t been shown in public since the killing.
NEW YORK — The Iran government executed two more gay men by hanging on Nov. 12, according to a Reuters report. The two men, Mokhtar N., 24, and Ali A., 25, were convicted of the crime “lavat,” which the nation’s penal code describes at penetrative and non-penetrative sexual acts between men. It takes one act of penetration or four acts of non-penetration to qualify for the death penalty under Iranian law, Reuters reported. “The execution of two men for consensual sexual activity is an outrage,” said Jessica Stern, researcher with the Human Rights Watch. “The Iranian government’s persecution of gay men flouts international human rights standards.” They are at least the third gay couple executed this year because they are gay. The case of two Iranian teenagers who were hanged drew worldwide attention in August, though they were charged with forcible sodomy. In March, another gay couple was convicted when officials discovered a videotape of the men having sex. One of the men confessed that he made the video to use against his partner if the other ever stopped providing financial assistance that he exchanged for sexual favors.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Dozens of gay rights activists could face fines or prison sentences of up to a month for rallying in Poznan last weekend in defiance of a city ban on their “Equality March,” authorities said Sunday. In the latest standoff between an increasingly active gay rights movement and authorities in this staunchly Roman Catholic nation, a few hundred activists staged a demonstration in the western Polish city of Poznan on Saturday, although police had blocked their planned parade route. Sixty-eight activists could face fines or prison, said a spokesperson for the district prosecutor’s office in Poznan. A spokesperson for city police also told PAP that about a dozen aggressive counter-demonstrators were arrested. Some of them chanted slogans such as, “We are going to do with you what Hitler did with the Jews.”
PARIS — The leader of a lesbian trio was sentenced last week to 28 years in prison for the 2002 murder of a country baker during a robbery, the London Telegraph reported. Magali Rossi, armed with a hunting rifle, shot Sylvain Bétrix, 22, while robbing the bakery he and his wife operated in Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert, France. Rossi took about $34 in the robbery, according to media reports. Prosecutor André Merle said the victim worked long hours, compared to Rossi and her two accomplices, who Merle said “don’t work and don’t especially look for work.” According to Merle, “These are two kinds of France colliding with each other. It is for you to say which France we ought to protect and which one we must repress.” Prosecutors said Rossi, now 34, lived in Marseilles with her lover, Anne-Sophie Royol, 33, Royol’s daughter, and a third woman, Emilee Després, 22. Royol was sentenced to 10 years and Després to three years for their roles in the crime, the Telegraph reported.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian transsexual woman said last week she won’t fight a decision by the government to declare her marriage to a man as illegal because she wants “no trouble” over what is believed to be the first such union in this mostly Muslim country. Jessie Chung, a Christian businesswoman who was born male and underwent sex change surgery in China in 2003, said she was “satisfied and very much in love” after marrying Joshua Beh in a ceremony conducted by independent church pastors in Malaysia’s eastern Sarawak state on Nov. 12. Home Minister Azmi Khalid said their marriage was an invalid same-sex union. Chung’s identification papers state she is still a man, since Malaysian transsexuals cannot legally update their gender status even after changing their sex. Malaysian newspapers said it was the country’s first marriage involving a transsexual.
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