He added that both had been convicted of "perverse activity" in Iran - a country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has claimed does not have any homosexuals at all - and had police reports from the convictions to show to authorities as proof of their homosexuality. It goes too much into their privacy, and, in addition, both of them were Muslim. Both were from Iran," he said. He said that they all refused to take legal action against the authorities for fear that they would be denied asylum. All three underwent the testing in the end, and were granted asylum. Martin Rozumek, the director of Czech NGO Organization for Aid to Refugees, said in the last two years his organization has acted as a legal representative to three people - two men and a woman - in their bid to avoid the phallometric testing. "Let's not forget that asylum seekers come from countries of origin where homosexuality, or a gay identity, is also already strongly stigmatized, both by society and by law," he added.
"We're talking about quite an intrusive examination, which can interfere with a person's psychological integrity, and also with the core of a person's intimacy, which is likely to raise feelings of shame," said Matteo Bonini-Baraldi, the author of the 68-page report, which examines discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in all 27 EU member states. (Ironically, as GlobalPost has reported, most of the actors in Prague’s booming gay porn industry are heterosexual. It is performed when the authorities doubt the credibility of men who are seeking asylum in the Czech Republic because they would be persecuted for their sexual orientation in their home country. The test, which is performed by a sexologist, consists of showing the homosexual asylum seeker heterosexual pornography while measuring his "physical reaction," according to the report by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights. It has been used in fewer than 10 asylum cases, he said. The "phallometric testing" is only conducted after the asylum seekers have consented and when it is not possible to verify a person's sexual orientation through other means, said Czech Interior Ministry spokesman Pavel Novak, according to news reports. PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The Czech Republic defended its "testing" of the homosexuality of gay asylum seekers Wednesday after the European Union's leading human rights agency condemned it for the controversial practice.