Gay Iranian Teen
Faces Death If Deported

A young Iranian man who sought sanctuary in the United Kingdom now faces deportation back to his home country. Medhi Kazemi, 19, came to London to study English in 2004 and later discovered that his boyfriend back in Iran had been arrested, charged with sodomy, and hanged, according to The [London] Independent. He also found out that during his boyfriend's interrogation by local police, he named Kazemi as his partner.

Kazemi filed for asylum in England, but his case was denied in 2007, so he fled to Holland, where he is presently being detained. He appeared before a Dutch court on Wednesday, pleading that it not return him to England, as British authorities are likely to send him back to Iran.

In a letter to U.K. home secretary Jacqui Smith, Kazemi wrote that he did not come to the country to claim asylum but rather to study.

"But in the past few months my situation back home has changed. The Iranian authorities have found out that I am a homosexual and they are looking for me," he wrote. "I cannot stop my attraction towards men. This is something that I will have to live with the rest of my life. I was born with the feeling and cannot change this fact, but it is unfortunate that I cannot express my feeling in Iran. If I return to Iran I will be arrested and executed like my former boyfriend."

A Dutch appellate court will now decide whether to grant him permission to apply for asylum in Holland, which offers protections to gay Iranians, according to TheIndependent.

A spokesperson for the Home Office told the paper that the government is "committed to providing protection for those individuals found to be genuinely in need, in accordance with our commitments under international law. If an application is refused, there is a right of appeal to an independent judge, and we only return those who have been found by the asylum decision-making process and the independent courts not to need international protection."

According to Iranian gay rights activists, more than 4,000 gays and lesbians have been executed since the Ayatollahs took control of the country in 1979. Most recently a gay 21-year-old man was convicted for sodomy and executed in December. (The Advocate)