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Demonstration London 22.03 |
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Jet |
29-03-08 17:26
Mehdi must stay
Ben Lewis reports on the recent protest
On Saturday, around 15 members and supporters of Hands Off the People of Iran joined in the protest against the threat to deport to Iran Mehdi Kazemi, the 19-year-old gay man whose partner was executed by the regime for “sexual crimes” (ie, being gay).
Around 100 turned out, with the majority of them coming from the National Union of Students LGBT contingent. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the British left, most notably the Socialist Workers Party, were not present. This should not come as much of a surprise, considering that the SWP’s position on Iran is a (slightly less consistent) version of Galloway’s apologia (See ‘George Galloway alibis Iran’ Weekly Worker March 20).
The demo was called by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty-sponsored Middle East Workers’ Solidarity and, despite fundamental disagreements with the AWL on Iraq and the nature of imperialism, Hopi was more than happy to support such an action and build support against Kazemi’s deportation, whilst at the same time not blunting our unequivocal opposition to imperialist wars and sanctions.
Moreover, Hopi’s leaflet warned that “… sections of the establishment and the media have seized upon this case to win support for their threats against Iran. Only a year ago the British media couldn’t care less about cases such as that of the persecuted Iranian lesbian, Pegah Emambakhsh. This propaganda effort is as inexorably linked to the war drive as the sanctions that are currently strangling Iran”.
The leaflet prompted some interesting discussions with the demonstrators, including with an AWL member who was trying to argue the case for economic sanctions against Iran. Indeed, he was also of the opinion that an imperialist-promoted ‘velvet revolution’, were it to incite some activity amongst the masses, would also not necessarily be a bad thing! This is obviously not a majority position, but it says a lot about the AWL that such shameless social-imperialists are able to find a natural home in this outfit.
Speakers included Hopi steering committee member Peter Tatchell, Communist Students candidate for the NUS executive Chris Strafford, and Sofie Buckland and David Broder from the AWL.
Source: --->Weekly Worker click here<---
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27-03-08 22:27
Gay Iranian Safe, For Now
By: Doug Ireland
03/27/2008
Protesters outside 10 Downing Street on March 22, including Peter Tatchell, demanded that Gordon Brown's Labour government end its efforts to deport Mehdi Kazemi, a 19-year-old gay Iranian.
In the latest protest aimed at preventing the UK from deporting 19-year-old Iranian Mehdi Kazemi to his homeland where he faces probable execution, 150 demonstrators braved hail, snow, and rain in London on Saturday, March 22, to rally outside 10 Downing Street, the official residence of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Protesters demanded that Brown's government refrain from efforts to deport any gay and lesbian Iranians.
For the moment, at least, the Brown government has put its original deportation plans for Kazemi on hold, pending formal reconsideration.
The Kazemi case has attracted worldwide attention ever since the UK Home Office ordered him to be deported last year after his student visa expired. While in Britain, where he had been a student since 2005, Kazemi learned that his longtime boyfriend, Parham, who was the same age as him, had been arrested, tortured, and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a lengthy e-mail to the Iranian Queer Organization describing his plight, Kazemi wrote, "If I return to Iran I will be arrested and executed like Parham." (For background on the Kazemi case, read this reporter's February 28-March 5, 2008 article, "Another Iranian Tragedy".)
After losing an internal Home Office appeal against his deportation, Kazemi fled the UK, first to the Czech Republic and then to Germany, before finally arriving, after weeks of peregrinations, in the Netherlands, where he was detained as an "illegal immigrant." A Dutch court on March 3 ordered Kazemi returned to the UK, citing the European Union's Dublin Regulation, under which asylum applications must be processed in the first EU country in which the petitioner made an official claim for legal recognition as a refugee.
A worldwide campaign to save Kazemi from deportation to Iran was spearheaded by the Italian human rights group Gruppo EveryOne, which also launched an online petition campaign on Kazemi's behalf and mobilized other Italian human rights groups and the country's Radical Party to lobby the European Parliament to take action. In the UK, the militant gay rights group OutRage! and a newly-formed committee called Gay Asylum led the fight on Kazemi's behalf. None of the US gay rights groups, including the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, made any public statement about Kazemi's life-or-death struggle for freedom.
TV networks CNN, ABC in Australia, the BBC and Sky News in the UK, and Italy's RAI have all carried stories on Kazemi, as have major newspapers, including the Independent, the Guardian, and the Times in the UK, Corriere della Sera and La Republicca in Italy, and El Pais in Spain.
On March 14, the European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a resolution on the Kazemi case that had been introduced with the support of 142 of its members and 62 members of the British House of Lords. The EuroParliament resolution pointed out that the Iranian authorities "routinely detain, torture, and execute persons, notably homosexuals" and that "Mehdi's partner has already been executed, while his [own] father has threatened him with death."
The resolution added that "the EU and its Member States cannot apply European and national laws and procedures in a way which results in the expulsion of persons to a third country where they would risk persecution, torture, and death, as this would amount to a violation of European and international human rights obligations." The EuroParliament stressed that the EU directive regarding criteria for refugee status "recognises persecution for sexual orientation as a ground for granting asylum."
The resolution "appeals to the Member States involved to find a common solution to ensure that Mehdi Kazemi is granted asylum or protection on EU soil and not sent back to Iran." More broadly, it argued that "more attention should be devoted to the proper application of EU asylum law in Member States as regards sexual orientation."
The resolution invoked the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the removal of persons to countries where there is a serious risk that they would face the death penalty, torture, or other inhuman treatment, as well as the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Geneva Convention.
Within hours of the passage of the EuroParliament's resolution, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith issued a brief statement granting Kazemi a temporary stay of his deportation.
"Following representations made on behalf of Mehdi Kazemi, and in 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," Smith said.
Openly gay British MP Simon Hughes of the Liberal Democratic Party, who had campaigned on Kazemi's behalf, told the UK's Pink News, "I hope Mr. Kazemi will now come back to Britain [from the Netherlands] where arrangements are already in place for an urgent meeting with him, his family, specialist lawyers, and myself to prepare a new application to the Home Office."
Hughes added, "It is becoming more and more clear that sending gay people back to Iran under the present regime is completely unacceptable."
But it is not only young Kazemi who remains at risk for deportation to Iran. Another 12 gay and lesbian Iranians living in the UK also risk being sent back into the hands of the theocratic Tehran regime.
Prominent among them is 40-year-old lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh, who became a refugee in the UK in 2005 after her partner in Iran was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death by stoning. Her request for asylum was refused, and in August 2007 she was arrested in Sheffield and imprisoned to await deportation. But after a worldwide campaign on her behalf, she was released on September 11 last year while her appeal of the deportation order remains pending.
However, the Independent reported on March 7, Emambakhsh has lost her latest appeal.
"Ms Emambakhsh narrowly avoided deportation in August last year but only after her local MP, Richard Caborn, and other parliamentarians persuaded the Government to allow her to stay while further legal avenues of appeal were explored," the British newspaper reported. "She says she was already on the way to Heathrow [Airport] when she learnt of her last-minute reprieve. But last month the Court of Appeal turned down her application for permission for a full hearing. Ms Emambakhsh said yesterday that she was 'very disappointed' by the ruling but planned to apply for a judicial review at the High Court. The Home Office has also agreed to consider fresh legal representations on her behalf."
The UK was embarassed when Emambakhsh was offered asylum by the center-left government of Italy's Premier Romero Prodi, an implicit criticism of the British plan to deport her to Iran. Prodi acted after Gruppo EveryOne mobilized pressure.
Emambakhsh told the Independent, "I will never, never go back. If I do I know I will die."
As the Independent noted in a March 6 article on the Kazemi case by the newspaper's law editor, "The Home Office's own guidance issued to immigration officers concedes that Iran executes homosexual men but, unaccountably, rejects the claim that there is a systematic repression of gay men and lesbians."
At Saturday's Downing Street demonstration, OutRage! leader Peter Tatchell denounced Brown's Labour government for "failing LGBT refugees."
"Asylum staff and adjudicators receive race and gender awareness training but no training at all on sexual orientation issues," he pointed out. "As a result, they often make stereotyped assumptions - that a feminine woman can't be a lesbian or that a masculine man cannot be gay. They sometimes rule that someone who has been married must be faking their homosexuality.
Tatchell went on to say, "The government refuses to explicitly rule that homophobic and transphobic persecution are legitimate grounds for granting asylum. This signals to asylum staff and judges that claims by LGBTI people are not as worthy as those based on persecution because of a person's ethnicity, gender, politics, or faith."
Moreover, Tatchell noted, "The Home Office country reports on homophobic and transphobic persecution are often partial, inaccurate, and misleading. They consistently downplay the severity of victimization suffered by LGBT people in violently homophobic countries like Iran, Nigeria, Iraq, Uganda, Palestine, Algeria, and Jamaica.
And, he said, "Cuts in the funding of legal aid for asylum claims means that most asylum applicants - gay and straight - are unable to prepare an adequate submission at their asylum hearing. Most solicitors don't get paid enough to procure the necessary witness statements, medical reports, and other vital corroborative evidence."
It's clear that Kazemi, Emambakhsh, and the other Iranian LGBT refugees seeking asylum in the UK still have a difficult road ahead of them.
Source: --->GayCityNews click here<---
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Jet |
24-03-08 15:08
Mehdi Must Stay Demo:
Call to Reform Asylum System to Protect Lesbian, Gay Refugees
Protestors in Whitehall on Saturday demanding that Mehdi Kazemi be granted refuge in the UK.
photo courtesy Outrage!, London
LONDON, March 25, 2008 – The British Government is currently failing gay refugees, Peter Tatchell told a rally in Whitehall, outside the Prime Minister’s official residence 10 Downing Street.
Over 120 protesters braved hail and rain on Saturday to demand that gay Iranian asylum seeker, Mehdi Kazemi, be granted refuge in the UK.
They also urged asylum for the Iranian lesbian refugee, Pegah Emambakhsh, and an estimated 12 other gay Iranians who are at risk of deportation back to Tehran.
There were calls for a “fundamental reform” of the way the Home Office treats LGBTI asylum applicants.
“The British government had ordered Mr Kazemi to be deported back to Iran,” said protest speaker Peter Tatchell, spokesperson for the LGBTI human rights group OutRage!.
“Following worldwide protests, the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith MP, has agreed to review Mehdi’s case.
“While there is no guarantee that this review will result in him being allowed to stay, we are hopeful that he will be permitted to lodge a fresh asylum claim and that this will result in Mehdi being given refugee status in the UK,” he emphasised.
Saturday’s protest was sponsored by Middle East Workers’ Solidarity and the National Union of Students LGBT campaign, with the support of OutRage!
The protest's three main demands were:
■ Don’t send Mehdi Kazemi back to Iran
■ Iran’s homophobic laws violate human rights
■ Give the victims of homophobic persecution the right to settle in the UK
“There needs to be a fundamental reform of the way the Home Office processes LGBTI asylum applications,” Mr. Tatchell told the rally:
“The government is currently failing LGBTI refugees:
“Asylum staff and adjudicators receive race and gender awareness training but no training at all on sexual orientation issues,” he pointed out.
“As a result, they often make stereotyped assumptions: that a feminine woman can’t be a lesbian or that a masculine man cannot be gay. They sometimes rule that someone who has been married must be faking their homosexuality.
“The government refuses to explicitly rule that homophobic and transphobic persecution are legitimate grounds for granting asylum.
“This signals to asylum staff and judges that claims by LGBTI people are not as worthy as those based on persecution because of a person's ethnicity, gender, politics or faith.
“The Home Office country reports on homophobic and transphobic persecution are often partial, inaccurate and misleading. They consistently downplay the severity of victimisation suffered by LGBTI people in violently homophobic countries like Iran, Nigeria, Iraq, Uganda, Palestine, Algeria and Jamaica.
“Cuts in the funding of legal aid for asylum claims means that most asylum applicants – gay and straight – are unable to prepare an adequate submission at their asylum hearing.
“Most solicitors don’t get paid enough to procure the necessary witness statements, medical reports and other vital corroborative evidence.
“The Home Office has failed to take action to stamp out anti-gay abuse, threats and violence in UK asylum detention centres.
“Some LGBTI detainees report suffering homophobic or transphobic victimisation, and say they have failed to receive adequate protection or support from detention centre staff,” said Mr Tatchell.
Peter Tatchell of Outrage! (left) and Derek Lennard of International Day Against Homophobia at the demonstration.
photo courtesy Outrage!, London
Source: --->UKGaynews click here<---
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Jet |
23-03-08 20:52
More pictures
--->Flickr click here<---
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Jet |
23-03-08 19:56
150 at protest to defend Mehdi Kazemi
By martin
Created 23 Mar 2008 - 2:59pm
Over 150 people turned out on Saturday 22nd for a protest against the deportation of Iranian gay 19-year-old Mehdi Kazemi. Even though the Iranian regime has already executed his boyfriend, Mehdi is in limbo, with the Dutch government and the UK Home Office refusing to let him stay. The protest also highlighted the cases of Pegah Emambakhsh - an Iranian lesbian woman - and Jojo Yakob - a Syrian gay man - also under threat of deportation.
This turnout was particularly pleasing in that it came despite snowy weather and bitter cold. Dozens of activists came from outside London, including groups of students from Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester.
Speakers such as Sofie Buckland (NUS NEC and Feminist Fightback) and David Broder (Middle East Workers' Solidarity) highlighted the inherent racism of the immigration system and called for the abolition of borders. Similarly, demonstrators chanted slogans including "No borders, no nations, stop deportations!" and "Mehdi must stay!"
They furthermore pointed to the homophobia of people like George Galloway who call themselves left-wing but have refused to back Mehdi Kazemi, instead leaping to the defence of Iran's theocracy. Opposing war does not mean we have to whitewash the Iranian regime - the anti-war movement needs to be honest if it is to deserve support.
Other speakers at the demonstration opposite Downing Street included Peter Tatchell, Scott Cuthbertson (NUS LGBT), Chris Strafford (Hands Off the People of Iran) and Dave Landau (who advertised next Saturday's conference of trade unions against immigration controls)
Middle East Workers' Solidarity will continue to defend Middle Eastern asylum seekers from deportation and highlight the issue of immigration controls, as well as opposing war and supporting unions and social movements in the region.
Source: --->Workers Liberty click here<---
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Jet |
23-03-08 19:44
Foto's van de demonstratie in Londen d.d. 22 maart
--->Demonstration London click here<---
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