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.