Well said.

if anyone is still reading:

not ‘your expert witness’

rather ‘their expert witness’

Well, it matters to me.

Thanks again for providing the judgement, which informs my criticisms.

I think the present system whereby asylum applications are decided on a case-by-case basis based on their merits and with an eye on credibility and guided by caselaw and policies is probably best. Not perfect though.

Agreed. But you take your arguement too far I think when you say:

In that case every man and his grandad from Turkmenistan to Timbuktu will probably claim to be an Iranian homosexual caught having sex on the rooftop by a Mullah!

The first paragraph of the judgement says this:

The appellant was born on 6 June 1970. He is an Iranian male who is homosexual, who practised homosexuality in Iran and who has continued to do so since his arrival in the United Kingdom. He claimed asylum on arrival in the UK on 17 December 2001.

In other words the prosecution in this case didn’t dispute the fact of his homosexuality. It was accepted, for the purposes of the trial that he was homosexual. That was never the subject of the judgement. It is ludicrous to argue otherwise.

The point being that returning a homosexual to an increasingly, see para 19, environment was at the very least dangerous, especially as Iran now admits to 2,148 cases of sodomy, which, at worst carries the death penalty. It also seems obvious that the judiciary did not understand your own expert witness It is also interesting that only one expert witness appears to have been called.

I think it stinks.

Which changes what, exactly?

By that logic we should deport ALL genuine asylum seekers automatically, whatever they are fleeing, in case their true story gives inspiration for others to make up lies. The whole point of having a court (ostensibly, at least) is to filter out the liars.

As for your suggestion that this would mean accepting any gay Iranian who applied, well, um, yes: the only alternative as far as I can see is to actively help the Iranian regime to kill them, by systematically deporting them into the hands of their waiting police force. I suppose you’d prefer that to the horrific and spine-chilling spectre of having a few gay Iranians about the place, being so hideously Iranian and gay all over Hounslow or something.

Perhaps you’d volunteer to be the official to help the gay Iranians off the plane at the Tehran end.

“I think the present system whereby asylum applications are decided on a case-by-case basis based on their merits… is probably best”

That’s NOT the current system. The current system is, to put it bluntly, to deport as many people as possible on any conceivable technicality and/or weasel argument such as this one, in order to appease the tabloids (which, of course, will never be appeased, since that would reduce sales)

The Iranians will know this man is a homosexual, because he is well known to have applied for asylum on those grounds. The penalty in Iran for being a homosexual is death. It is therefore pretty damn self-evident that if he is deported to Iran he is highly likely to be arrested, charged, and then executed. Of course, he’ll have a right to a defence lawyer and all in the court in Iran, so I suppose that’s alright with you, how much more ‘objective’ could the death sentence be!? :bewildered:

But that’s really not the issue: the court’s core argument was really that he brought his persecution on himself (by failing to obey Iranian law, when he could technically have done so) so he has no right to protection from that persecution, and should go back to Iran to await his fate. If the system accepts that kind of blatent sophistry as legitimate, there’s something clearly wrong.

That argument would provide grounds to refuse virtually every claim for political asylum. You could, for example, argue with absolutely equal validity that a political dissident from Zimbabwe brought persecution upon themselves by stupidly speaking out when they could easily have avoided persecution by being a good boy and doing as they were told by Mugabe, and therefore should be refused asylum, and returned to Zimbabwe to await their punishment.

This whole blatently unfair racket is based on the government’s assumption – thanks in no small part to the tabloids – that the electorate are so pervasively racist that they don’t care if foreigners are deported to imminent torture or death for committing no significant crime, so long as that means they don’t have to hear about another (ugh!) foreign scrounger using up their tax money by getting an op on the NHS.

And that, frankly, stinks.

They should be, yes’

In that case every man and his grandad from Turkmenistan to Timbuktu will probably claim to be an Iranian homosexual caught having sex on the rooftop by a Mullah!

I think the present system whereby asylum applications are decided on a case-by-case basis based on their merits and with an eye on credibility and guided by caselaw and policies is probably best. Not perfect though.

ps. Sonia @20 you don’t seem to understand that the link clearly shows there were two legal representatives at that hearing. One for the Home Sec and the other for the appellant. So both sides presented their cases and submitted evidence. There is no question that only one side was afforded this facility. How much more ‘objective’ can the evidence be? :bewildered:

I believe it to be a numbers game.

So do I.

Which takes us right around in a circle and back to Rumbolds original contention, quoting Unity:

….or Smith’s unthinking parroting of the official line, which puts political expediency ahead of not only of Labour’s longstanding commitments to equality and human rights but ahead, even, of basic human compassion.

The point about asylum is that it is bloody well supposed to be humanitarian, not a stupid statistical ‘who can piss the highest’ contest.

Political triangulation is squeezing the pips out of our compassion, I think.

I trust that we agree?

They should be, yes’

As I understand it case law is also driven by ‘public interest’, which in effect is policy determined by the government. So if policy is to reduce immigration, then I would expect the tribunals etc. would be swayed by that. Which of course relates to ‘sustainability’.

I believe it to be a numbers game.

Are all Iranian homosexuals to be granted asylum?

They should be, yes

Is this sustainable?

Odd question, i have no idea what ‘sustainable’ means, after being granted asylum they should obviously be allowed to work.

I’m actually pleased that you did give us that link. It is only through reading that sort of information that anyone has any chance of establishing quite what criteria are being used. So, to the contrary, I think you have made a valuable contribution to this debate.

I wasn’t for one moment holding you personally accountable.

Do people not want an informed debate?
How else are the authorities to come to a decision?
Are all Iranian homosexuals to be granted asylum?
Is this sustainable?

Rumbold started the debate and I feel that I have contributed to that by providing the legal criteria used by the Judiciary, Home Office and the legal profession to come to decisions on homosexuals in Iran. I neither agree nor disagree with the caselaw. However, it WILL be a case the Immigration Judge has to take in to account.

Well, according to our friend Unity, one way of escaping the death penalty for being gay is to have a sex change.

Bizarre but true, you have to remember that Iran is an islamic country as defined by Khomeini. Transexualism is a social taboo but perfectly legal, whats more they actually allow them to alter their birth certificates (unlike us).

The courts as a starting point take an incredibly narrow and very difficult to reach view of what persecution actually means, and in my opinion often resort to little more than sophistry. When the poor man in Ashik’s link first came to Britain he basically said he had a gay relationship in Iran, his mother knew and accepted he was gay as did a small group of friends. He lived a gay life discreetly in Iran for 13 years and wasn’t caught.

The court basically said the way he did behave in Iran took prominence and was tolerable as a way of life compared to the way he should be allowed to behave (openly as in the UK). The risk of being caught by the authorities was acceptable as there were no ongoing pogroms in Iran – regardless of what would happen if he was caught.

It is shameful.

muslim societies will not promote or mainstream homosexuality. its a no brainer really but a useful political tool for some, and its getting tired.

it would a nice change to have a sober analysis based on empirical evidence, rather than self defeating human rights bitching.

#8

Well, according to our friend Unity, one way of escaping the death penalty for being gay is to have a sex change. As Unity’s facts are usually irreproachable, maybe he should be an expert witness too.

See here:

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/06/24/youll-be-safe-in-the-closet-maybe/

His strap line ‘Safe in the Closet’ ought to resonanate with a previous generation of UK politicians, should it not. And perhaps Judges too.

For those that don’t do links, Unity suggests that around 20,000 sex change operations have occurred in Iran, mostly to meet a Fatwah that the solution to homosexuality was to reassign the person the other gender. Situation solved!

Bloody Hell.