President Ahmadinejad’s contention during a speech at Columbia University that there are no homosexuals in Iran drew a swift rebuke from human rights organizations, with one activist challenging the president to explain how he, a gay Iranian, exists.

Taking questions from Columbia faculty and students who attended his address yesterday, Mr. Ahmadinejad answered a query about the treatment of gays in Iran by saying: “We don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. We don’t have this phenomenon; I don’t know who’s told you we have it.”

The executive director of the Toronto-based Iranian Queer Organization, Arsham Parsi, had a question for the president yesterday.
“Who am I? Who am I, if we don’t have any queers in Iran?” Mr. Parsi said, noting that in 2005 he had had to flee Iran to escape arrest.
A spokesman for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Hossein Alizadeh, said that, in Iran, there is a “constant fear of execution and persecution and also social stigma associated with homosexuality.”

Mr. Alizadeh, who said he is gay and moved to America from Tehran in 2000, added that the commission, which is based in New York, has documented numerous cases of gay persecution, including executions, in Iran. It is difficult to know for certain the number of Iranians executed because they are gay, as the government refuses to disclose the real reasons that lead to arrests, he said. The director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, Scott Long, said Iranians arrested on suspicion of being gay are routinely tortured.

Mr. Alizadeh, who said he was not openly gay in Iran, said there are many cases of Iranians in America and other countries who are seeking asylum because of their sexual orientation, noting that he himself was granted asylum on that basis.