At long last Mehdi Kazemi has been granted asylum in the UK and is now safe from being sent back to a near certain death in his home country of Iran. It’s about bloody time too. I hope Ian McKellen manages to get him to Pride in July – whether he likes it or not he has become an important public figure in the fight against this government’s ignorance and institutional homophobia.
But don’t forget about Jojo Jako Yakob, don’t forget about Pegah Emambakhsh (even Obama hasn’t), nor the many other asylum seekers, both gay and straight, treated with barbaric cruelty in their politically undermined asylum applications, be they free or detained.
Dr. Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MEP for South East England, demanded that the British government makes homophobia and transphobia absolute grounds for asylum.
And she’s right of course. The Dutch can do it (although not without governmental resistance), so why can’t we?
4 responses so far ↓
paul canning // May 20, 2008 at 9:55 pm |
Actually he has ‘leave to remain’ for five years and the case will be reviewed then. It’s still a major victory but that’s an important point.
Thanks for your ongoing support. I’ll have a piece on PinkNews filling in some of the detail on what this means.
cosmodaddy // May 20, 2008 at 10:04 pm |
Thanks for that Paul, I was going to ask you about that – I saw your post on mehdikazemi.com a few minutes after I posted here. Would this result be the customary norm, or would indefinite leave to remain be expected?
Jacqui Smith is a Killer « Cosmodaddy // June 23, 2008 at 11:15 pm |
[...] Smith proved once and for all just how ruthless she can be. Having received limited kudos for her finally granting asylum to Mehdi Kazemi, the question remained – would she institute a moratorium on deportations of gay asylum seekers to [...]
Save Babi Badalov! « Cosmodaddy // September 20, 2008 at 7:06 am |
[...] 20, 2008 · No Comments Maybe they really thought Mehdi Kazemi’s rescue would be a distraction, but the Home Office and its UK Border Agency are already back to trying to [...]