As upheaval continues in Iran, with no clear sense yet of concluson, we checked in, via phone, e-mail and Facebook, with a few of the gay Iranian refugees in Turkey and Toronto profiled in the June/July issue of Out. One of these, Nima, is a young gay male artisan who fled Tehran due to persecution over being gay. We called Nima, who is still living alone in a village in Central Turkey, waiting to hear if he gets asylum status from the U.N. Refugee Agency office in Ankara, which could allow him to eventually come to the U.S. He says he's been getting most of his news from Iran on Facebook. "It's awful how easily they kill and beat people," he said of the government. "It's very violent. But I think there's a fire underneath the ashes, because people are getting mad easily and now they've got the guts to come into the streets."
And yet, Nima feels, even if a new president were to succeed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the situation for LGBT individuals wouldn't necessarily improve overnight. "We have a long way to go," he said. "We have so many basic things we need to solve in Iran about women's rights and children's rights." But, he says, it's hard not to be in Iran right now, part of the protests. "This is actually the first time in my life when I really wanted to be there. I almost cried reading Facebook, seeing almost 4,000 people in the street."
Meanwhile, the standoff is being watched closely by LGBT refugees who've already made it to the U.S. or Canada. "It's horrible because we're here, with no access to people or true information," said Arsham Parsi, who heads the Toronto-based Iranian Queer Railroad, which works to get LGBT people out of Iran and safely to the west. "Watching Iranians being killed and security forces shooting them-it's very hard. I think the Iranian people are paying the price for [striving for] freedom right now." Still, Parsi wonders whether the situation would improve if the opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, were to succeed Ahmadinejad. "He still introduces himself as loyal to Iran's constitution," under which homosexuality is punishable by arrest, lashings or even death, "and to the Supreme leader," said Parsi. "But he could change."
Also in our story, Babak, the unofficial "house daddy" for an apartment full of LGBT refugees in Kayseri, Turkey. (His back is to the camera in the first picture you'll see if you click on the story.) Over e-mail, Babak, who is still waiting for his flight date to the U.S., seemed angry about events in Iran. "For sure, it doesn't feel good," he wrote. "When we chat with friends, they all say that people are crushed and killed...they have guns and don't care [if they kill] in the name of religion and Islam...I'm glad that the world can see now what's really going on in Iran."
In Babak's house, the lesbian we named as Sahar is the only refugee who's still waiting an unusually long time, even as she was back in February, to hear from the U.N. about asylum status, the first step in the years-long process of coming to the U.S. or Canada (or, in some cases, Europe or Australia). Her real name is Roodabeh. Iranian Queer Railroad has started an e-mail campaign to the U.N. Refugee Office in Ankara to get the U.N. to green-light both hers and Nima's asylum status. Click here to take a minute or two to join onto the campaign—there's even a sample letter you can e-mail or fax. (In the petition, Nima is named by his real name, Ali.) A flood of faxes and e-mails from the west just might help these two get the official U.N. nod they've been waiting for.
Even then, they'll wait months, likely years, more before they finally touch down in Canada or the U.S. (The good news? Since we were reporting the story in February, 10 new refugees have made it to Canada or the U.S., says Parsi.) Meanwhile, even while following the exciting, unnerving news from the homeland they fled, Iran's LGBT refugees stuck in the No Man's Land of Turkey go on waiting. "I've been here a year and a half now," said Nima/Ali. "I'm working, I bought a few plants for myself. I feed my cats and try not to get crazy, but I'm tired. I'm really tired. How much more long?"
-- TIM MURPHY
Previously > Be Like Others: Transitioning in Iran
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