The Point: We can do it

Monday, August 20, 2007

We can do it

One thing you can do right now - ten seconds - to stand in solidarity with someone who needs it:

Pegah Emambakhsh (thankful for taking that basic Persian class when I try to pronounce that name), an Iranian national, came to the UK in 2005 requesting political asylum on the basis of persecution back home for what the Islamic Republic of Iran sees as the crime of her homosexuality. She risks certain imprisonment and the possibility of execution in Iran if she returns.

Despite repeated appeals, her claim was rejected on August 13th and she was due to be deported shortly afterward. Hours before she was supposed to board her flight, immigration services over there apparently had a change of heart and she was brought back to Yarlswood detention centre, where she is now being held. Evidently this has much to do the growing body of people protesting her deportation and the intervention of a local MP.

Much has been made on other blogs of the particular method of execution which will apparently be invoked: stoning. I don't know if this is because it seems more visceral than a friendly needle in the arm or to stir up some distant collective bells ringing in our brains between (justifiably) much-reviled fundamentalist Islamic governments and stoning. The apparent cause of the rejection of her application for asylum seems to me a particularly stinging slap in the face. I say this very comfortably willing to challenge anyone who'd dare stand up and say one should be "demonstrably" lesbian. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is helpful in this regard, but I've got some fight in me to do it on my own.

Helen Todd has begun an online petition in Pegah's support here.

Thank you to Arsham Parsi for the tip-off and Spartakus for posting the uncredited photo.

Labels: human rights, iran, queer stuff, sexuality

posted by Christopher at 6:48 p.m.

3 Comments:

A very similar case is currently going on in Canada: the refugee claim of a twenty-one year old Nicaraguan man named Alvaro Orozco was denied because he could not satisfactorily demonstrate his sexual orientation. You can find out more about this and take action here: http://orangehabitat.com/alvaro/