Gay Iranian Claims He Was Outed By TV Documentary

A lawsuit alleges he was arrested, beaten and raped after "Out in Iran" was broadcast.
From: NewNowNext

 Farzam Dadashzadeh, a gay Iranian refugee now living in Vancouver, has sued the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for including him in their documentary Out in Iran: Inside Iran’s Secret Gay World without his express permission.

In the suit, Dadashzadeh alleges that his inclusion in the film led to him losing his job, being disowned by his family and eventually being sent to prison, where he was assaulted and raped by other inmates. After enduring the ridicule and violence, he was forced to flee Iran for Canada.

The claim was filed last week in the Supreme Court of British Columbia and names the CBC as well as two of its reporters, Farid Haerinejad (pictured below, left) and Evan Solomon (pictured below, right), as defendants.

 Out in Iran was meant to chronicle the persecution of queer people in Iran and their struggles to gain equal rights under the current theocratic regime. Reporters Farid Haerinejad and Evan Solomon were led through Tehran’s LGBT scene by various subjects, including one gay man named Mani.

At one point in the documentary, Mani leads the journalists to the Jam-e-Jam café, an establishment widely known as catering to Tehran’s LGBT community.

“Most of the people coming here tonight are homosexuals,” Mani tells the reporters in the documentary, adding that they “can’t take the camera in there.”

“We keep our camera hidden, but Mani has told the crowd that we’re here to film, and there’s group consent,” Solomon says over the footage.

Without asking for further permissions, the crew continued to film, leaving the faces of café-goers, including Dadashzadeh’s, unblurred and unhidden.

Dadashzadeh claims that because the journalists were using hidden cameras, he didn’t think to take any measures to protect his identity. His suit asserts that he can be seen in several wide shots of the space as well as in a few closeups that reveal “identifying features” of his face.

At the end of the documentary, Solomon states: “About the people you saw in that item, all of them agreed to show their faces on camera fully aware of the potential consequences. Just so you know that’s a factor we took very seriously in making this documentary.”

The documentary was eventually broadcast by CBC and later shared online. Dadashzadeh states that he was “shocked and scared” to see himself included in the final product, saying he was alerted to the documentary’s existence by a cousin who threatened him.

It wasn’t long before his entire family found out about his true identity, which he’d revealed to only one of his aunts prior to the airing of Out in Iran. Their reaction was swift and negative.

“Farzam became and remains alienated and disowned by and from the members of his immediate family, including his father and mother,” reads the notice of civil claim.

According to the suit, Dadashzadeh was then assaulted in the very café featured in the documentary. When police arrived, he was arrested alongside his assailant.

He spent two weeks in prison, where he was “repeatedly sexually assaulted, which included being sodomized, beaten and kicked by other prisoners, with the knowledge and assistance of, and at the behest, of the police.”

Once he was released, he quickly began figuring out how to flee Iran. In 2014, he emigrated first to Turkey before arriving in British Columbia by February of that year.

Neither Solomon, who was fired from the CBC in 2015, nor Haerinejad have responded to the suit.

Chuck Thompson, head of public affairs for the CBC, has since stated, “[The suit] just came to our attention this week and we’re taking some time to consider our options and how to move forward.”