Gay Iranians and the 'Green Revolution'

Photo source

Iranians are struggling for their rights and we, LGBTQs, are within people. We are active in this battle as citizens of Iran but we do not want to make any problem or additional pressure on our oppressed community.

From a letter to the author by Iranian gay students

Since the declaration of the results of the Iranian Presidential election on June 12 the world has been following what's been termed 'the green revolution' on the streets of Iran's cities.

Much has been written about how women are leading the protests and demands for democracy:

For these wives, mothers, sisters and daughters, their march to oust Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has everything to do with their desire for equal rights.

The regime in Iran obviously feels threatened by peaceful female activism. They branded as illegal the One Million Signatures Campaign initiated by women's rights groups in Iran, a campaign to change discriminatory laws against women in that country. Dozens of women involved in the effort have been harassed or jailed by the government.

But there are other, minority, groups suffering in Iran who have bravely joined the protests.

Lesbians and gays suffer severe social disapproval in Iran as in much of the Muslim world (or the Christian, see Uganda or Jamaica) but, as in Iraq and Lebanon, have historically been discreetly tolerated - gay nightclubs existed during the Shah's rule as they did under Saddam's.

Following the Islamic revolution in 1979 they have faced a state which threatens them with death (Iran is one of only a handful of countries where death is the penalty in law for what Iran's version of Sharia law calls 'Lavat') and which uses entrapment and 'morality police'. The regime's homophobic violence has also spilled over into Iraq where Shia death squads hunt gays.


Click image to enlarge map

Over the past ten years Human Rights organisations have documented numerous executions however getting hard information has been clouded by the regime's tactic - aware as they had become of their international image - of using other charges than homosexuality, such as rape.

This is what was alleged in the infamous case of teenagers Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni which produced images whose currency internationally against the regime is as strong as those of Neda, the young women shot by a Basiji militia during the protests on the streets of Tehran.

It is not confirmed that they were in fact gay and information about this and other cases is also clouded by their use by competing exile groups as well as right-wing American groups as propaganda. Nevertheless executions are known to have taken place. The boyfriend of the young Iranian gay asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi. who eventually won refuge in the UK, was killed by the regime.

The use of rape charges in particular is part of the hypocrisy and violence at the heart of the regime - rape is a tactic they themselves use to suppress and torture:

"It was on Saturday or Sunday that they raped me for the first time. There were three or four huge guys we had not seen before. They came to me and tore my clothes. I tried to resist but two of them laid me on the floor and the third did it. It was done in front of four other detainees.

"My cell mates, especially the older one, tried to console me. They said nobody loses his dignity through such an act. They did it to two other cell mates in the next days. Then it became a routine. We were so weak and beaten up that could not do anything.

"Then the interrogations started again. They said: 'If you don't come to your senses we will send you to Adel Abad [another prison in Shiraz] to the pederasts' section so that you receive such treatment every day.' I was so weak I did not know what to say. Then they asked for my contacts. I told them I had no contacts and I was informed about the demonstrations through the internet."

With the knowledge of what they face if arrested, the bravery of those not only on the streets but those who defy the regime and get word out via the censored and monitored internet is heroic.

All those (and it is around 32000) who have been following one young student on Twitter, Change_for_Iran, have heard first hand about the violent raid on Tehran University dormitories, his going into hiding in the city, his fears for his friends who could not be contacted and then his disappearance then reappearance on Twitter having got himself out of the city.

Gay students from Iran tell me that:

Iranian government is very sensitive about western media and they are monitoring the internet very carefully.

The students contacted me because of a letter which claimed to come from a gay Iranian student organisation which had been circulated by a Toronto, Canada, organisation. It had been quoted in an article I had distributed which was published by the Boston gay magazine Edge but none of them had signed it and they contacted 286 others throughout Iran and none of them had either.

They warned, in a letter signed by 28 named people:

"You will make a big problem for us by publishing this letter especially in this situation that many of students are subject of arrest by Iranian authorities."

The fear comes from the suggestion of the existence of an organisation of gay students. Hossein Alizadeh, of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission says that these fears are well-grounded:

"The reality is that gay people are always the easiest target for the government to go after. I’m worried that if there is a crackdown, they will be targeting gay people. LGBTs have a lot to lose if the result of this is that the current government is more entrenched."

Part of the government's crackdown on the 'Green Revolution' has been to, quoting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, label them "thieves, homosexuals and scumbags".

Yet the irony of this statement, apart from the fact that Ahmadinejad told an American audience in 2007 that "in Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country", is that, in the case of gays, they do form part of the opposition.



'Morality police' assaulting a young man on a Tehran street

"The Iranian LGBT community is angry, in addition all minorities. These are the people you see in the streets of Iran," says Arsham Parsi, of the IRanian Queer Railroad (IRQR). Like women and young people who face harassment and worse from the regime's morality police they are unhappy with the discrimination and being targeted by the government, he says.

"Enough is enough. They’re going to the street to support the green movement and saying, ’We do exist, we didn’t vote for you and we want our votes back.’"

LGBT activists in the west and their supporters and allies owe it to their incredibly brave brothers and sisters in Iran to do all we can to support the 'Green Revolution'




At a protest outside the London Iranian embassy

A crack in the UK Asylum edifice

Comment piece for PinkNews

It's very hard for most British gay men and lesbians to imagine what it's like to grow up in a country like Iran. To fear what you are and to have to act with care 24 hours a day, lest your family finds out and possibly kills you in a so-called 'honour killing' or the state discovers you and tortures you.

So trying to understand the sheer torture of your boyfriend being discovered and executed, seeking safety from what you know is your certain, similar fate, in what you'd always thought was the 'civilised' West - and being disbelieved and rejected - is beyond most of us. Imagine how much harder this would be when you are still a teenager, most of us couldn't begin to.

But this has been the life experience of Mehdi Kazemi, still only 19 years old.

We all know the story - PinkNews has been one of the few news outlets which has been keeping us informed of the case's twists and turns. But there are many other 'cases' who have already been kicked out of Britain to unknown fates, who have committed suicide rather than be sent 'home' or shiver in fear today because this 'civilised' country leaves them 'hanging' for years before they learn their final fate.

In Holland their policy is to automatically grant 'leave to remain' to LGBT asylum seekers. If they commit no crimes, after five years they can claim Dutch nationality. Sweden has something similar — many other countries, including the United States, treat LGBT asylum seekers better than the UK. For the UK, 'leave to remain' - what Mehdi has - doesn't necessarily mean that people can stay permanently.

As Peter Tatchell told CNN, "at the end of five years [Mehdi] will have to go through the whole appeal process again."

The Dutch Liberal MP Boris van der Ham, who led parliamentary efforts to secure asylum in that country for Mehdi, made a point of finding out just how many gay people are 'flooding' into Holland under their policy. He did this because the debate there, echoing what some say in the UK, had included that familiar right-wing claim: 'we'll be flooded'.

It's 6 LGBT asylum seekers expected over the next year and 38-40 in total since 2006.

In the UK the ukgayasylum group has about 25 people currently on its books.

These are tiny numbers and both the Dutch and Swedish experience proves that adopting a civilised policy doesn't result in so-called 'flooding'.

But it is clear from my information through back channels that the Home Office has dug in its heels, remains extremely keen to 'not set a precedent' and is influenced by such reactionary ideas.

In a statement issued to CNN the Home Office said:

"We keep cases under review where circumstances have changed and it has been decided that Mr. Kazemi should be granted leave to remain in the UK based on the particular facts of this case."

The truth is that the only circumstance which has changed is the publicity and that cannot be the actual reason otherwise many others, like the gay Syrian JoJo Yakob, who The Scotsman is backing, cannot be kicked out.

The normal sort of statement is such cases is one like this from another gay Iranian's case about 'living discretely'(my emphasis):

"On the evidence we find the appellant can reasonably be expected to tolerate the position on any return ... For the reasons given the appellant’s appeal remains dismissed."

This reflects the attitude shamelessly outlined by Home Office Minister Lord Spithead in the Lords at the height of the interest in Mehdi's case:

“We are not aware of any individual who has been executed in Iran in recent years solely on the grounds of homosexuality, and we do not consider that there is systematic persecution of gay men in Iran.”

As the Mehdi campaign dragged on, as the Independent gave it a front page, as numerous Labour and other members of parliament lobbied, as the European Parliament passed a resolution, as US networks carried it on their evening news, the fear that he would indeed be deported regardless was very real. They have done it before.

As gayasylumuk's Omar Kuddas explains:

"He was almost deported at Xmas. They came for him at precisely the time when they thought it would be hardest to get lawyers and others out to defend him. This is how the Home Office behaves."

There have been others before Mehdi. Last year the Italian Prime Minister contacted Gordon Brown to argue the case for Iranian lesbian Pegah Emambakash - all to no avail as she slipped from news coverage and is now on her last legal legs to save herself from deportation back to Tehran. JoJo Yakob in Scotland has just suffered through the blatant homophobia of the Home Office on display at a Tribunal and will only be safe if a judge is sympathetic and rejects that homophobic policy and practice for which Jacqui Smith and, ultimately, Gordon Brown are responsible.

Kuddas is one of the many unsung heroes - gay and straight and from many countries - who have helped save Mehdi. As you read the many claims of responsibility for 'Jacqui's u-turn' from politicians and some showboating organisations over the next few days bear that in mind.

The only reason that the government shifted in Mehdi's case was because it was all getting just too embarrassing for Gordon Brown. Him, not Smith. And they hope that by granting leave to remain just to Mehdi, and by twisting their 'rules' in order to do it, that we'll all shut up.

They don't want a policy change and there is no doubt in my mind that the real reason is because they fear the Daily Mail and other agenda-setters and their 'hardline' against asylum seekers more than they fear a backlash from us, the LGBT community. Tony Blair and David Blunkett set the 'quotas to fill' ball rolling and Jacqui Smith is the latest to be carrying it through and damn the consequences.

They present one face to us citizens and another face - 'discretion' and blatant homophobia - to persecuted foreign LGBT who dare to claim asylum. Worse, another Department - the Foreign Office - is out there preaching to other countries about Human Rights, including LGBT rights. The hypocrisy couldn't smell any stronger.

What I think has been their major political miscalculation is precisely their perception of the attitude of Middle England. When publicity about Mehdi was at it's height you had to search for hardline opinion saying 'throw him out anyway' and even those saying this had a guilty tinge to their tone.

Comments left with the Daily Mail and - yes - even those of The Sun's readers recognised this country's historic attitude to accepting genuinely persecuted people as refugees - it goes back centuries, it's part of who we are. It was clear from reading those comments, and many of those on the 7,000 strong petition, that ordinary British people well understood this and accepted that this meant accepting persecuted gays and lesbians from countries like Iran. It was also clear from the horrified overseas media coverage - 'this is Britain!?'

But this political miscalculation only seriously holds true if, now he has 'asylum', Mehdi's case isn't seen as a one-off and, particularly, if gays and lesbians hold Labour to account for their unchanged homophobic policies towards these members of our community. I fear we won't. So prove me wrong.

For us, I think the government's attitude to the pitifully few LGBT asylum seekers we have in Britain shows them up as hypocrites over LGBT rights. I honestly think that they think these people are so powerless, that their cases so rarely provoke protest and news coverage, they can safely ignore protest; that they will not face any consequences.

They just don't expect a voter backlash.

For us, I think we need to be collectively saying 'enough is enough' to Labour on LGBT asylum seekers and behave as one community. I, for one, could not be happier for Mehdi but I am not 'grateful' to Jacqui Smith or her boss for this crack in the asylum edifice.

It will take a lot to get me voting Labour again (after a lifetime of support) precisely because of how I have seen how they treat these weakest members of our community. I hope you feel the same and I hope you tell Labour why you feel it. Until they change their shameful policy on LGBT asylum seekers they don't deserve anyone's vote.

Mehdi wins 'leave to remain'

I am just waiting on confirmation for this but I have just heard second-hand that Mehdi Kazemi has been granted asylum. More detail when I get it.

2.30pm: It's confirmed, Mehdi told the ukgaynews website that he had received a letter from the Home Office today to say his asylum request had been granted.

“I am so happy,” he said, adding that he was grateful to all the help he had been given, especially by Simon Hughes MP.

A statement will be issued tomorrow. I am very interested in how the Home Office will explain the grounds!

Updates: all updates - coming in fast now - on this fantastic news are now on mehdikazemi.com

Mehdi is back in UK

Mehdi Kazemi was returned from Rotterdam on Friday and processed then released at Heathrow. He's now in the care of his uncle somewhere in the South-East.

Out of detention is great but he hasn't won yet. Free in one very important sense, but not in another

More about Mehdi and the campaign and how you can support him on the new www.medhikazemi.com website.

Mehdi Kazemi: On his way back : Dutch "We have confidence in a good outcome"

Conservative State Secretary of Justice, Nebahat Albayrak

In an emergency debate in the Dutch Parliament Lower House this afternoon the conservative State Secretary of Justice, Nebahat Albayrak, confirmed that the gay Iranian, Mehdi Kazemi, will be returned to the UK.

The debate was the initiative of the liberal D66 party. They found enough support in parliament on Tuesday from the GroenLinks (Green), ChristenUnie (centrist), PVV (conservative), SP (left) and PvdA (social democrats, sister party of the British Labour Party) opposition parties to secure today's debate. The PvdA agreed to open the debate.

The Dutch have a policy to not return gay refugees to Iran.

Figures quoted in the parliament by Boris van der Ham, the D66 (liberal) MP, who has led the defence of Kazemi amongst MPs, show that only 38-40 gay people have been granted asylum under this policy since 2006, when an attempt was made to repeal it.

Albayrak said:

"I defend those policies with conviction."

Dutch opposition parties were concerned that the British were not offering any guarantees of asylum for Mehdi and so that policy would therefore be breached "through the back door".

"There is no guarantee”, said SP MP Jan de Wit. "This is indispensable for my group."

"Gays are at risk to suffer from the terrible and barbaric regime in Iran", argued PVV MP Fritsma Sietse.

"Iranian gays can count on 110 lashes of the whip, sometimes to death, " said Boris van der Ham.

Dutch opposition MP, Boris van der Ham

Van der Ham presented new information to the parliament about the increased persecution of homosexuals in Iran which was published last week by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

He requested that Albayrak bring the new HRW information to the attention of her European counterparts - including Jacqui Smith - as well as the Iranian ambassador to the Netherlands and he wants to know what action the Dutch ambassador to Iran is taking.

The opposition had argued that Albayrak should depart from a European agreement that Kazemi must apply for asylum in the first country he arrives in and instead receive asylum in the Netherlands. Albayrak said that agreeing to this would undermine work for a common European asylum policy.

"Dan snijden we onszelf in de vingers", said Albayrak. "Then we cut ourselves in the fingers."

As well, a request for guarantees could also be interpreted as a sign of mistrust.

"I have no indication that England does not respect international treaties."

Albayrak said:

"I am confident that England, even in this case, will comply with the treaty obligations. I have talked to the British Secretary of State [Home Secretary Jacqui Smith,] and she told me that this person is being reconsidered, and that they are taking into account the new facts, such as the fact of the publicity in Iran, now everybody knows that this man is homosexual. This case has my personal attention and I will continue to follow the procedure. "

However the opposition expressed strong skepticism in relying on British asylum procedures.

Albayrak said that granting asylum could bring more gay asylum seekers to the Netherlands. Henk Kamp representing the party of controversial MP Geert Wilders, VVD, and others also suggested that approving asylum would lead to a flood of gay asylum seekers.

Activists report that several members of the government expressed their support for granting asylum for Mehdi in private but the political block system of voting, analogous to 'whipping' in the UK parliament, meant that the vote following the debate could not be won.

However there was majority support for Albayrak to keep them informed of the progress of Kazemi through the British asylum system and for the Netherlands to call for a European policy of not returning gays and Christians to Iran.

Dutch activists supporting Kazemi say that the requirement is that 48 hours expire before he is returned to the UK, however van der Ham says he may be returned as early as Friday 4th.

Prior to the debate the Dutch gay group COC Netherlands and the action group 'Help Seyed Mehdi Kazemi' had presented in the square outside the Lower House building a 800 signature petition, gathered during the past fortnight, to van der Ham to pass on to Albayrak.

COC reports that, failing a positive outcome from the British asylum process, a lawyer has been found to begin proceedings at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

• Mehdi Kazemi news updates
• www.madhikazemi.com

Mehdi Kazemi update: April 1st - may be back in UK Monday

News from the Netherlands that Mehdi - the 19 year old gay Iranian under threat of deportation to likely execution - may be returned to the UK on Monday.

He has said to visitors and his Dutch lawyer that he would rather remain in Holland - and for very obvious reasons.

Despite Jacqui Smith's forced statement, he does not trust the British Government and is very scared. Here, there is precedent with the case of the Iranian lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh. A major campaign last year involving Romano Prodi and offers of refuge by two Italian cities have not stopped the Home Office making continuing efforts to deport her.

This all just underlines that Mehdi is not safe yet and won't be until the final end game is played out and he actually has asylum. Please continue to sign the international petition and the petition to Gordon Brown and write your support. > More

What has held up deportation to the UK from the detention centre outside Rotterdam where he is have been the actions of Dutch opposition MP, Boris van der Ham (pictured).

Although the Minister has decided to send him back, van der Ham has forced a parliamentary debate over the lack of British government assurances. This was due to happen tomorrow, Wednesday 2nd, but now appears likely to be on Friday because of the commotion over the Fitna film about Islamism.

Once that is rejected - which is being assumed will happen as the government will have a majority - they have to wait a couple of days to actually do the deed.

Says van der Ham:

The Netherlands has for a few years had a policy that gays (and Christians) are not returning to Iran because of the great dangers.

If he is rejected again by Britain, the Netherlands will be, in my eyes, complicit in a high risk for this boy.

• VIDEO: Dutch TV report
  
• All my Mehdi Kazemi news updates

Save Madhi Kazemi

A web site has been set up for the campaign here - www.madhikazemi.com

Please circulate this if you can.

Donations are urgently required to support Madhi's legal case.

• email gayasylum.donations@yahoo.com

Support via money 360 vouchers available online or at any pay point outlet.

Also O2 credit vouchers are required as we are going though loads at the minute as you can imagine.

Convenient right-wing language

Checking some blog reactions to the Mehdi Kazemi case I've seen a few right-wing bloggers making the usual arguments about 'not imposing our culture', 'he claims to be gay', 'the floodgates will open' and asking Jacqui Smith to 'stand firm'.

Here's what I told one of them:

1. It’s not a ‘claim’ to be gay - that’s your convenient belief.
2. “Deporting Mehdi Kazemi back to Iran” - you forget to add “to his death”.
   
   You guys always forget the last bit, knowingly back to his death. I wish you would actually say this instead of this pretend language.
   
   Say it. Stop talking ‘uphold the law’ bollocks and say it. ‘ We must be prepared to be tough and send people knowingly back to be hanged’.
   
   Are you a real Tory or what?
   

It interests me that they usually preface these opinions with a 'sorry but ...' then somehow forget to name what they're actually asking for. How convenient for their conscience.

• medhikazemi.com for all news updates

Video: interview with Omar Kuddas of gayasylum about Mehdi Kazemi

Interview by frictiontv with Omar Kuddas of the Uk gayasylum group about the Mehdi Kazemi case. This interview was conducted prior to the Dutch court's decision to return Mehdi to the UK.

• medhikazemi.com for all news updates

Urgent appeal; Mehdi Kazemi; please help

>> THURSDAY 13th:

Mid afternoon the Home Secretary made the following statement (my highlight):

Following representations made on behalf of Mehdi Kazemi, and in the light of new circumstances since the original decision was made, I have decided that Mr Kazemi's case should be reconsidered on his return to the UK from the Netherlands.

The only 'new circumstances' is the campaign. Pressure works. Please keep it up as Madhi is not yet safe.

~~~~~~~

As you may be aware from the BBC, the 19 year old gay Iranian refugee Mehdi Kazemi has lost his case in the Netherlands and the Dutch are refusing to reconsider.

Mehdi is under real threat of deportation by the Home Office (this was why he fled to Holland) as his legal avenues are near-exhausted. If returned to Tehran it is extremely likely that he will be executed, as his young boyfriend already has been.

The United Kingdom had sent a formal request to Holland asking for Mehdi's return to Britain, in order to proceed with his deportation to Iran.

I understand that he will be returned to the UK within three days and there are no guarantees that he will not then be immediately deported. An appeal to the European Court is being drawn up.

Please help by doing any of the following today:

• PLEASE contact your MP today. The media coverage is no guarantee that Jacqui Smith will not send him back.

You can also use the following contact points:

• Home Secretary, The Rt Hon Jacqui Smith MP
  House of Commons, Westminster,
  London, SW1A 0AA
  By Telephone and Fax : 01527 523355
  By E mail: smithjj@parliament.uk
• Sign the petition
• Home Office email
  public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
  indpublicenquiries@ind.homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

This is the message which I sent to my LibDem MP, which you could use as a template:

Dear Mr XXX

I am a constituent of yours but I write on a non-(my city) matter.

As you may be aware from news coverage of the case, the government is threatening to return the gay Iranian refugee Mehdi Kazemi to Iran and probable execution. This situation has become even more critical as he will be returned from the Netherlands in the next few days.

I would greatly appreciate if you would be able to join your colleague, Simon Hughes, in taking whatever action you can to press the issue with the Home Office.

As a gay man I can put myself in Mehdi's shoes and find the attitude and actions of my government just beyond belief.

I hope you are able to help in some small way as there seems to be no other way to get through to Jacqui Smith except perhaps the contempt of her fellow MPs.

Yours sincerely

Paul Canning


~~~~~~~~

New website Save Madhi Kazemi

Demonstration:
Saturday March 22nd, 2pm, Downing Street. Nearest tube Westminster/ Charing Cross

• More information

On government spin*:

We are extremely cautious about the way in which we treat these cases
They have shown no evidence of caution. For a number of years they have consistently refused asylum to gay and lesbian Iranians, because that is their policy. Some of these people have subsequently committed suicide. There is a mass of evidence, including from the Foreign Office, that Iran is a 'deathzone'.

We give detailed consideration to these cases
They do not consider the stated opinion of their own colleagues in the Foreign Office and never have.

They go through a rigorous appeals and court process
There is a Home Office policy that gays and lesbians can be returned if they are 'discreet'. Further, there is a history of the Home Office accepting bland assurances from the Iranian government. Further, there is a lot of evidence of rank homophobic attitudes within the Appeals Court process.

Obviously we have to follow and respect the integrity of that process
Not if it is biased. Not if the outcome is guaranteed because of their (unstated) policy. There is no integrity to this process for gays and lesbians.

* as restated today in the House of Lords.

• More information

Labour's ongoing gay refugee shame

In September 2003, Israfil Shiri, a gay Iranian asylum seeker, died after pouring petrol over himself and setting himself on fire in the offices of Refugee Action in Manchester, after his asylum claim was refused (in the lower and appeal court) and his deportation to Iran, where he would have been hanged, had been arranged. Iranian authorities had obtained documented evidence of his sexuality.

In April 2005 Hussein Nasseri shot himself two weeks after his asylum claim was turned down by the Home Office, refusing in this way to let himself be killed by Iranian executioners.

In 2005 then Home Secretary Charles Clarke was asked by Stonewall to intervene when an Appeal court judge used the following language in turning down a refugee's claim:

'He [the asylum seeker] says he fled when he realised a member of his coterie had been arrested by them, apparently leaving an incriminating video in their hands, showing unseemly activity on the part of this appellant and others.'

The 'independent' judge also went on about "buggery". Nothing happened. Clarke let it go on unchallenged. All of the previous appeals to previous Home Secretaries for previous cases of Iranians and other gay refugees have failed.

Last year a campaign was fought to save Iranian lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh. She was eventually released but her last appeal has now been turned down and she remains under real threat. Thankfully, she was also featured in this week's Independent coverage but that is no guarantees she will not face stoning on deportation because the policy lying behind all this has not changed.

The policy of the British government in the case of foreign gays and lesbians is that their sexuality is a choice, they can simply hide or move and nothing bad will happen to them. As noted before, this directly contradicts the Foreign Office. I'd add that this is in sharp contradiction to the face presented to British gays.

Jacqui Smith is just the latest in years of Labour Home Secretaries who have trumpeted their claims on gay rights to British gay voters whilst being responsible for the most vile homophobia within their own department - when it comes to foreigners. This is two-faced one law for 'us', another for 'them'. Their ongoing appeasement of this homophobia, to my mind, indicates to me where their true feelings lie: that they are no real 'friend of the gay community' anywhere. They cannot claim that they don't know about it - as they've done before - least of all this week when it's front page news.

This week, in responding to the Mehdi Kazemi case, the government has responded that each case is "carefully considered" and that everyone has the "right to appeal". But none of this matters one iota because of the policy which lies behind it which is — we don't accept that gay people are persecuted anywhere and therefore they have no right to refugee status.

This is all made even worse by the tiny numbers involved, giving the lie to statements by the like of the Tory East Midlands MEP who stopped just short in an email from a supporter of Mehdi Kazemi of saying 'we'll be swamped by gays fleeing Islamic countries'. Neither Holland or Sweden, who have different policies to the UK, have been 'swamped'.

A few questions:

• When is the British Press going to cover the shameful policy which lies behind these refusals of asylum and start asking real questions?
• When is the vile homophobia within the Home Office going to be challenged by the various anti-discrimination bodies and characters like Trevor Phillips?
• When are gay and lesbian Labour supporters and MPs going to stand up for gay refugees?

• medhikazemi.com for all news updates

Mehdi Kazemi in his own words

Last September President Ahmadinejad of Iran told an audience in New York that 'we have no homosexuals in Iran'. This story was republished around the world and there's video below. In the comments section of the New York Sun I found a response by Mehdi himself:

I do exist as an Iranian homosexual

I have got very surprised, very angry of this article and I do not understand really what is point of President of Iran. If Iran do not have any homosexual then I do not understand who I am then because I am an Iranian Gay and I have so many problem back my country where is Iran because of my sexual orientation

my life is in danger in Iran then what is that?

What is the piont of seeking asylum for Iranian Homosexual? They do not want to leave their country, family, friends,...... . Why is that? They put everything behind theirself to go to another country that they anything about it.

And what is the piont of tourting, killing, .... of Homosexual if there is not?????!!!!

My purpose of this letter is to kind of answering President Ahmadinejad and to say that I do exist as an Iranian homosexual and it does not matter where I am.

Best regards,
seyed Mehdi Kazemi


Ahmadinejad at Colombia University:

• medhikazemi.com for all news updates

The shame of gay asylum in the UK

Peter Tatchell wrote the following in 1996 in CIF about the UK's attitude to gay asylum seekers.

He has long experience of personally helping many, so he knows of what he speaks:

The failure to give refuge to the victims of genuine homophobic persecution is the single greatest blot on the gay rights record of Tony Blair's administration.

Too right. Jacqui Smith is complicit, as were her predecessors and let's not forget the gay and lesbian people in power who've stood by.

From my day-to-day work with asylum seekers, I hear first hand shocking stories about homophobic abuse and inhumane conditions inside the UK's asylum detention centres, including allegations of homophobic insults, beatings and sexual assaults. Frightened refugees, who have narrowly escaped death and seen their partners murdered, are treated like common criminals..

Asylum adjudicators nearly always turn down gay refugee claims, even when the person has presented evidence of imprisonment, rape and torture. Adjudicators often acknowledge their brutal maltreatment but advise claimants that they will not be at risk of repeat persecution if they go back home, change their identity, stop acting effeminately, never have sex and move to a remote part of the country where no one knows them. That way, says the Home Office, nobody will realise the person is gay and therefore they will not suffer persecution..

This is the reality of how some gay people are dealt with by this government. I, for one, don't want these fellow gay people ignored — I can't ignore them, I can imagine myself in their shoes and I know full well how lucky I am to have been born here.

As Peter explains:

The Home Office does not explicitly accept persecution on the grounds of sexual orientation as a legitimate basis for gaining asylum.

Unlike Amnesty International, who will fight for persecuted gay people, and some other European and other governments.

Our government, which preaches human rights via the Foreign Office, has done much to advance gay and lesbian rights. Two years after this article it is time that someone in government did something about this stain - of blood - on that record.

• Mehdi Kazemi updates - including the new front page support of the Independent
• Peter Tatchell told the Independent:
  "It is just the latest example of the Government putting the aims of cutting asylum numbers before the merits of individual cases. The whole world knows that Iran hangs young, gay men and uses a particularly barbaric method of slow strangulation. In a bid to fulfil its target to cut asylum numbers the Government is prepared to send this young man to his possible death. It is a heartless, cruel mercenary anti-refugee policy."
  
• Find out how to contact your MP/MEP via writetothem.com
• Please help, even a quick email will help. We can change this by shining some light into this dark and shameful corner — we have done it before.

• Excellent Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary about gay life in Iran
  "We have to sacrifice everything to move forward"
  
  
• In a rare BBC story about this issue from last year, one Iranian gay man who was deported in 2003 describes how the ill treatment began as soon as he touched down in Tehran. Here's another story about a man who shot himself between the eyes with an airgun rather than be deported.
  

Update: Iranian gay deportee, Mahdi Kazemi

All Mehdi Kazemi News updates are now at medhikazemi.com

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• Go to medhikazemi.com for all past news updates.

Video: Italians protest UK deportation of gay teen to Iran

Google translation from the Italian (Source: radioradicale.it):

In the coming hours the gay Iranian Seyed Mehdi Kazemi will be transferred from Holland (where he is after having fled from England following the British authorities' refusal to grant him political asylum) to London, before being deported to Iran where he risks execution for the crime of "lavat" (sodomy). The delivery of Mehdi should happen already tomorrow.

None Touch Cain and the Radical Party Nonviolento, transnational and transpartito ask the Foreign Minister D'Alema to intervene immediately to the UK to freeze the unacceptable process of deportation to Iran of Mehdi. That represent a violation of international conventions on human rights and in particular the Convention on Refugees, the jurisprudence of the European Court on Human Rights and the same law (Directive 2005/85).

Yesterday [Monday 25th February] at 17:30 in Rome, in front of the Embassy of Great Britain (Via XX September, 80), there will be a demonstration of No Touch Cain, Nonviolento Transnational Radical Party and Transpartito and Group Everyone, to ask the Government to halt the English 'extradition of Medhi to Iran.

Monday's protest (in Italian)



NB: I will try to get this onto a video sharing site.

• Jacqui Smith is complicit in murder
• medhikazemi.com for all news updates

Jacqui Smith is complicit in murder

A post of mine from last year on Iranian executions of gays has been consistently getting hits from people looking for information on that subject.

The link at the end is to the Iraqi LGBT exiles organisation — where you can donate to efforts to save people's lives.

I've now come across a similar group for Iran. They're supporting 'safe houses' and campaigning against asylum seekers being sent back to their deaths.

[Iran is not alone. Athough gays suffer murderous persecution ( a 'deathzone') in Iraq and many other nations, these are the ones with the death penalty in the statutes: Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Yemen and Nigeria. NB: The UAE includes Dubai, home to numerous supposed 'friends of the gays', such as the Beckhams, as well as the massed slave labour building those skyscrapers.]

Last year, some British MPs, to their credit, told the Iranians what they thought of them to their face during an official visit.

The Iranian Minister Mohsen Yahyavi (who is the highest- ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality) told British MP’s at the Inter-Parliamentary Union in May this year, that homosexuals should be executed [he initially said tortured but changed it to executed].

However the UK is still deporting gays and lesbians back to Iran.

One was Pegah Emambakhsh, who was saved last year by the intervention, amongst others, of the Prime Minister of Italy.

Nineteen year old Seyed Mehdi Kazemi is yet another that Jacqui Smith wants to send to his death. I have just discovered his case. He is arriving at Heathrow tomorrow and it is not clear whether he will be held or put straight on a Tehran flight.

Hearing this is heartbreaking - literally - because, as one anonymous commentator put it:

It could be any of us who are LGBT, who is in that position, if not for the roll of the dice that allowed us to be born in the West.

Here is his story:

Seyed Medhi Kazemi was born in Tehran and is not yet 20. On September 15th, 2005 he set off for the United Kingdom after applying for a student visa. At first he lived with his uncle in London and attended an English course. In November 2005 he moved to Brighton where he enrolled at the Embassy CES College of Hove. He renewed his student visa to November 2006, with the intention of returning to his family in Iran once the course was over.

Medhi loved a boy back in Iran called Parham, with whom he had shared a secret relationship since the age of 15. Medhi and Parham regularly wrote to each other via e-mail until December 2005, when Parham suddenly stopped writing. In late March 2006, Medhi’s uncle informed him that his father had found out about his homosexuality and his relationship with Parham: the boy had been arrested by the Iranian authorities after being caught with a peer and accused of “lavat” (sodomy).

During the interrogation he was forced to give the names of all the boys he had had relations with, including Medhi himself. Medhi’s father had then received a visit from the Tehran Police, with an arrest warrant for his son as they wanted to put him on trial. In late April, Medhi’s uncle told him Parham had been put to death.

At this point, Medhi decided to apply to the British Home Office for refugee status, as a similar fate awaited him back in Iran: a death sentence for lavat, and maybe even mohareb, followed by hanging in an Iranian prison (seeing executions are no longer being carried out in public places after the decree signed by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hasemi on January 30th, 2008). His application for asylum, however, was turned down by the Home Secretary.

Medhi, terrified at the idea of being deported back to Iran - where a death sentence awaits him – attempted to flee to Canada, but he was stopped by the German border police. After telling them his story, he was sent to Holland (a country known for granting refugee status to Iranian homosexuals) and handed over to police custody. However, the United Kingdom then sent an official request to Holland, according to the Treaty of Dublin, asking for Medhi’s return, in order to proceed with his deportation to Iran.

On February 13th, 2008, Medhi informed his uncle of his whereabouts, he was being held in Venlo police station in Holland and had been told he was soon to be transferred to Rotterdam. Medhi’s uncle says he last heard from his nephew on February 15th. Medhi was in the detention centre at Rotterdam Airport, and according to the boy, no one had told him what his fate would be, nor when he was to be returned to Britain.

Omar Kuddus, from the Gay Asylum UK association, tells EveryOne Group that he received a phone call from Medhi, on February 18th, informing him that the flight that is to take him back to Britain has been arranged for Tuesday February 26th: it will leave at 8 a.m. (Dutch time) from the Amsterdam Airport of Schiphol, and arrive at Heathrow, London at about 8.30 a.m. (British time).

Medhi is at present in a precarious state of heath and suffering from deep depression. Several days ago he started a hunger strike.

Hearing yet another story like this makes me ASHAMED to be British and ASHAMED of the Labour Party I voted for. UK gays should note as well yet another Italian protest against Britain, at the Rome Embassy on Monday.

Jacqui Smith heads the Home Office, whose policy appears to be to send people back and hope for the best. They, contradicting the Foreign Office, continue to deny murderous persecution of gays and lesbians in Iran. Smith, and her predecessors, have consistently failed to take leadership in this area, which campaigners have been raising for years.

Jacqui Smith is the responsible party and needs to be called to account as complicit in murder.

This is the same as when her predecessors in the 1930s knowingly sent Jewish children fleeing Germany back to their deaths.

The Rt Hon Jacqui Smith MP
House of Commons, Westminster,
London, SW1A 0AA
By Telephone and Fax :
01527 523355
By E mail
smithjj@parliament.uk

Please contact her and/or tell others about Seyed Mehdi Kazemi.

YOUR HELP MAY SAVE HIS LIFE

• medhikazemi.com for all news updates

Iran killing more gay men

News about Mehdi Kazemi and other news about gay Iranians now at medhikazemi.com

The International Herald Tribune, amongst others, is quoting an Iranian Official proudly announcing "20 more men would be executed [which means paraded through the streets like we're back in the C17th at Tyburn] in the coming days on morality violations ... [such things as] rape, insulting religious sanctities and laws, and homosexuality."

Neither The Guardian or the BBC are mentioning gay people - Guardian: Iran to defy west by executing sex offenders. Rageh Omar's recent, otherwise excellent, documentary Rageh Inside Iran, again, ignored the executions.

Here's one story of A Gay Couple Who Have Been Tortured for Being Gay

• It's happening in Iraq as well, turning into a deathzone for gay men.
• Other countries on this list include Pakistan, Nigeria, Belarus, Russia, Jamaica, and Honduras.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone at last Saturday's London Gay Pride rally - he appeared on-stage with his two small children:

“This has become a good city for people of a different sexual orientation to live in.--we follow places like San Francisco and Copenhagen and Amsterdam -- but let's never forget these are just a few secure, isolated areas, in a world still awash with bigotry and hatred.”

"We used to see a situation a hundred years ago where gays and lesbians would be beaten to death and the police would turn a blind eye. That is still the situation for tens and millions of our comrades and sisters and brothers around the face of the planet,”

Livingstone met Iraqi gays in exile They have documented 350 death squad executions of lesbians, gays and transgender people and need money to maintain safe houses.