Gay facing death in Iran being deported

[druidravi]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3531630.ece

Spoiler :

A gay Iranian teenager faces deportation from Britain and execution in his home country after a Dutch court refused to hear his asylum claim.

Mehdi Kazemi, 19, will be forced to return to Britain, where his asylum application was rejected last year. He is then expected to be “removed” to Iran where his boyfriend was hanged two years ago for sodomy.

The ruling will put the Home Office under renewed pressure to reassess his case — or face the possibility of sending a young man to his death. The department’s own guidance concedes that Iran executes homosexuals but rejects the claim that there is a systematic repression of gay men and lesbians.

The Times uncovered Foreign and Commonwealth Office papers in November that showed that the British Government regularly challenges Iran about its gay hangings.


One gay Labour peer said yesterday that he could not understand the Home Office’s refusal to recognise that homosexuals are routinely persecuted in Iran. Lord Alli told the House of Lords: “Homosexuality is illegal in Iran and is punishable by death. This young man’s partner was hanged at an early age for simply being gay.

“The Home Office’s position is that gay people can return to Iran safely providing they are ‘discreet’. Heaven knows what that means,” he said.

Mr Kazemi came to London to study English in 2005. He applied for asylum after discovering that his former boyfriend had been charged in Iran with sodomy and had been hanged. Legal papers claim that his boyfriend was questioned about sexual relations he had with other men and, under interrogation, named Mr Kazemi as his partner.

In a letter to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, Mr Kazemi wrote: “I did not come to the UK to claim asylum. I came here to study and return to my country. But . . . my situation has changed. The Iranian authorities have found out that I am a homosexual and they are looking for me. I cannot stop my attraction towards men . . . I was born with the feeling and cannot change this fact . . . If I return to Iran I will be arrested and executed.”

His case was refused last year and he fled to the Netherlands where he had hoped to reapply for asylum. Yesterday Borg Palm, his solicitor, said that the court had ruled that he could make a claim only in Britain. “The case was about whether he should be sent to Britain or not — which country was responsible for his asylum case,” he said.

According to human rights campaigners more than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed in Iran since the revolution in 1979.

In November the FCO released papers to The Times about the use of the death penalty for the “crime” of homosexuality. They showed that Mohsen Yahyavi, a senior Iranian politician, told British MPs at a peace conference last May that homosexuals deserved to be executed or tortured and possibly both. President Ahmadinejad, questioned by students in New York in September about executions of gay people, dodged the issue by suggesting that there were no gays in his country.

Gay rights groups condemned Britain’s handling of the case. Ben Summerskill, from Stonewall, said: “There is incontrovertible evidence that lesbian and gay people face danger in Iran and we will be raising this once again with the Home Secretary.”

Peter Tatchell, from OutRage!, said: “Mehdi has fallen foul of an EU regulation which stipulates that an asylum seeker can only claim refugee status in their first country of arrival.”

A Home Office spokesman said that he could not comment on an individual case, but added: “The Government is committed to providing protection for those individuals found to be genuinely in need, in accordance with our commitments under international law.We examine with great care each individual case before removal and we will not remove anyone who we believe is at risk on their return.”

How can a person facing death in his country be refused asylum? . It's not like he committed a crime , rather Iran's religious government being nuts. Shouldn't Britan grant him asylum ignoring needless bueracracy ?.

 

[Disenfrancised]

1) We don't know all the details of the case, so a snap judgment is silly.
2) They don't want to set precedent, as then people will claim to be homosexual to get asylum.
3) He probably won't be sent back now that this has been made so public (and there is no longer any chance of him being 'discreet' as their guidelines state), but the Home office needs to appear to be tough so they don't get inundated with claims.
4) You don't get to 'just grant stuff', as the laws and regulations are there for a reason - try to get them changed yeah, but the government doesn't get to flout them.

 

[silver 2039]

What are you talking about? THERE ARE NO HOMOSEXUAL"S IN IRAN!

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

2) They don't want to set precedent, as then people will claim to be homosexual to get asylum.

If he has already been charged in Iran, or at least had the accusation made against him, then the point is moot.

 

[Gooblah]

Nice.
Pretty sad, but we don't know all the details. Why is he being deported? Is he an illegal immigrant, or what?

 

[Gelion]

2) They don't want to set precedent, as then people will claim to be homosexual to get asylum.

Would you do it?

 

[CaveDweller]

The rational part of me says that responsibility should be limited to refusing to extradite people to countries which enforce the death penalty. But my nutty side says throw open the borders to all who would leave countrues that suck and defeat them by reducing their population to zero.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

1) We don't know all the details of the case, so a snap judgment is silly.

True.

2) They don't want to set precedent, as then people will claim to be homosexual to get asylum.

If you face death for something like that back home, why shouldn't you be granted asylum?

3) He probably won't be sent back now that this has been made so public (and there is no longer any chance of him being 'discreet' as their guidelines state), but the Home office needs to appear to be tough so they don't get inundated with claims.

The Home Office makes and breaks decisions based on public opinion?

4) You don't get to 'just grant stuff', as the laws and regulations are there for a reason - try to get them changed yeah, but the government doesn't get to flout them.

I'm not aware of an "extensive bureaucracy" you need to wade through to get bloody asylum, and if there is some, it should be removed for the sake of humanity.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

1) We don't know all the details of the case, so a snap judgment is silly.
.

I'm going with this. I'd like some more information.

 

[Alpine Trooper]

And I thought so many people from Britain were gay! Send him to Canada, he can get married here! And, what do you know? We've already built a house waiting for him and his relatives!

 

[GinandTonic]

If you face death for something like that back home, why shouldn't you be granted asylum?

IIR this case corectly from the first time round the issue was around his application.

Situation was that the imigration pannel was completely clogged with illegials claiming asylum once they were caught - something of a positive feedback loop since as more people claim the process takes longer and thus becomes more attractive and so more people claim etc etc. In a rather misguided attempt to break this cycle* the gov instituted a policy that if you do not apply for asylum PDQ on arrival you lose the opertunity. The stupidity of the policy - as exemplified in this case - is that if your situation changes while you are here so that you come to require asylum, well, you are up the creek without a paddle.

* The answer to the problem is to hire a couple more judges for the immigration pannels. Due process in double time. Rather than making the process unattractive by being beastly to the asylum seekers, make the process swift enough that the delay achieved by claiming asylum is an irrelivance. Hiring more judges also saves money since otherwise you have to a) detain the claimant b) support the claimant on benefits c) allow them to work (making the delay attractive and sending The Daily Mail into a hissy-fit) or d) refuse them both benefits and permission to work and let them decide between crime or working off the books.

 

[Dubai Vol]

Well, he's gay. Who cares what happens to him?

[/sarcasm]

But seriousy folks, until you are ready to stand up and tell these countries "no, you can't do that to people" then STFU. Being gay in Iran is just the tip of the iceberg. How about being a woman in any number of countries that practice female genital mutilation, or even just deny them equal rights? Essentially, women are property, in other words SLAVES, in lots of countries. Heck, The UK turns a blind eye to people living in England who treat their daughters as slaves.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/7289421.stm

 

[Newbunkle]

Wow, its so scary in Iran that he ran all the way here to the UK, instead of stopping in the nearest safe country.

 

[amadeus]

Wow, its so scary in Iran that he ran all the way here to the UK, instead of stopping in the nearest safe country.

Given the region, I think the UK is the nearest safe country for him.

 

[MobBoss]

But seriousy folks, until you are ready to stand up and tell these countries "no, you can't do that to people" then STFU.

I just have to ask. How exactly do you recommend we tell them this in a manner so that they will actually take notice?

 

[Rossiya]

I think Britain should be kicked out of the Commonwealth for this.

 

[GinandTonic]

Wow, its so scary in Iran that he ran all the way here to the UK, instead of stopping in the nearest safe country.

No he was a student here when his ex back home in Iran was hung for sodomy. Before he was executed the ex named him. So he was safe when he came to the UK but subsequently came to need asylum.

 

[GenMarshall]

What are you talking about? THERE ARE NO HOMOSEXUAL"S IN IRAN!

Yes there are. Cept you dont see them cause they are underground or one partner has a sex change.

 

[Volum]

What are you talking about? THERE ARE NO HOMOSEXUAL"S IN IRAN!

Not if they all keep going to Britain or get hanged!

 

[FriendlyFire]

well maybe he should STOP being GAY ????