Ray Saintonge wrote:
If you use
official records, there's zero gay bashing in Iran. I
wouldn't consider Egypt's records on GLBT issues accurate, either.
Can I read that as a vote for moving Wikimania 2008 to Iran?
You should probably read it as some doubt about the authenticity of
Iranian records in that area.
That's the
quandary with record-keeping. The places with the most
problems often have the worst records. Never mistake bad record keeping
with the absence of a problem.
Not always; those Germans were meticulous record
keepers.
They didn't consider the executions during WWII a problem; they
considered them a "solution."
While I can agree that there can be a strong
correlation between poor
human rights and poor record keeping, it is inappropriate to impute a
causal relationsip between the two.
I'm not claiming causality. I'm just claiming that a lack of records on
something doesn't indicate the absence of something.