Asylum granted to Mehdi Kazemi
Like many young people, Mehdi Kazemi came from Iran to study English in London in 2005. While here, he discovered that his boyfriend, back in Iran, had been charged with sodomy and hanged. He applied for asylum but was refused, although the Home Secretary agreed to review his case. He has now been granted asylum and so will not be deported to another country for the supposed crime of loving someone of the same sex.
As we know, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president of Iran, has said that he does not believe there are homosexuals in that country and he seems determined to make that the case by exterminating LGBT people there.
It is not often I agree with Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem MP for North Southwark & Bermondsey who has spearheaded the campaign to let Kazemi stay in the UK, but in this instance I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments:
“As I have argued over the last 18 months, the Home Office should not send gay and lesbian people back to countries where they will be at risk of persecution, torture or death.”
To have this sword of Damocles hanging over your head does no credit to the UK, particularly where there is such an obvious and serious risk of death. It is worth quoting a piece from the BBC News report on Kazemi:
“Iranian human rights campaigners believe more than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed since 1979.”
and from a speech given by Peter Tatchell on IDAHO, the International Day Against Homophobia.
“At least two gay Iranian asylum seekers have committed suicide in UK in the last five years, after being ordered by the Home Office to return to Iran. Israfil Shiri, aged 29, burned himself alive. Hussein Nasseri shot himself in the head. Both chose suicide rather than suffer deportation and probable execution by Iran’s ayatollahs.”
I hope that this precedent is observed in future and that similar situations are resolved without such delays.
xD.
