Australian immigration officials denied a visa to a Lebanese man who sought asylum because they don’t believe he’s actually gay.
The 25-year-old man is engaged to an Aussie woman, who he hoped would be his ticket to freedom from an abusive father and general persecution in his native country, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
The man purported to have had two secret homosexual relationships before coming to Australia for the first time in 2007. One night when he had returned home late with a friend, his father tied him up, hit him and burnt him with a cigarette, the man claimed. But during his first visit to Australia, the man became engaged to a woman after they were introduced by one of his uncles. He applied for a prospective spouse visa, providing the Department of Immigration with photographs of an engagement party and saying he planned to marry and have children. Eight days later, the man told the department he had broken off the engagement.
He withdrew, he says, because his boyfriend in Lebanon was furious with the arrangement. He argued before the immigration tribunal that “the struggles which a homosexual Muslim man faced when reaching marital age and in trying to avoid the stigma associated with being gay.” But the tribunal ruled that if the man was in actual danger he would’ve sought a protection visa sooner; a court agreed.
So it’s off to Lebanon he goes.
How about we take this to the next level?
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JJ
This is actually a difficult thing. I handle asylum cases here in the US. There are currently a substantial number of people from many parts of the world who are claiming persecution based on sexual orientation. However, many of these claims are demonstrably false. I fully understand desire to stay in the West, but it really does undermine claims of individuals who have suffered persecution.
afrolito
He should have filed ‘mostly straight’ status.
ron
Funny. There was a recent article on Queerty telling us how wonderful Lebanon was for gays. “Just like Paris” one of the muslim-apologists said. As usual the leftists are full of shit.
Sean
In high school Model UN, I almost started World War III by referring to the Lebanese delegate as the Lesbian delegate.
In my defense, she was rather butch.
peteNsfo
I suspect he is simply young and without a more experienced person to guide him through the labyrinth of government forms and correct answers.
He knows he must escape a strict Muslim household. He doesn’t want to come-out to his uncle who arranged to engagement. He accepts that pressure to be engaged and then sees it ain’t gonna work and fesses up. Entirely possible if he’s lived a fearful closeted life w/ his own family.
It’s easy to be suspect from your comfortable couch in the West. So how much suffering is enough for you to authorize a person’s desire to live a better life?
Brian Miller
Stories like this are why I roll my eyes whenever some sanctimonious western leader starts lecturing the rest of the world on “tolerance” and “equality for all.”
Here’s a country 2/3 the geographic size of the USA, with fewer people in it than the state of New York, that “has no room” for gay refugees.
The Brits were doing the same thing — sending gay people back to places like Iran — because “they couldn’t prove to our satisfaction that they’re actually homosexual.” They often told them “just go home and live discreetly.”
But if you converted to Christianity and were threatened over that, well, welcome to Australia, the UK or the USA, no questions asked!
tallskin2
@Brian Miller – I love the way you leap from saying “Here’s a country 2/3 the geographic size of the USA, with fewer people in it than the state of New York” (albeit with 98% of the land uninhabitable desert, but hey why let truth get in the way of a good story, eh?)
– then you go straight to saying: “The Brits were doing the same thing — sending gay people back to places like Iran” – thus implying that Britain is also 2/3 the size of the USA!
Well, no the UK is tiny and very overcrowded. We’ve seriously been taken the piss out of by illegal immigrants who abuse the asylum system, for nearly two decades now.
And for your information “asylum seekers” are schooled, taught, the best things to say to get refugee status. And since the UK started allowing sexual orientation to be a reason for granting this the number of people turning up in the UK and claiming to be gay has rocketed. Yeah right, guys!!
Now, it is easy to go “Tut Tut” with disapproval and to be liberal at other people’s expense, if it doesn’t cost YOU anything, and to criticise other countries for not taking the surplus population produced by the third world. But what is the situation in the USA? Does the USA allow easy access to asylum seekers who claim to be gay?
No, of course it doesn’t.
Now, stop being such a f*cking hypocrite!
jason
Australia must be a very backward place.
Brian Miller
the UK is tiny and very overcrowded
I’ve heard all the tedious excuses from the Brits.
The UK is so “overcroweded” and “concerned about overpopulation” that its government pays women to have children to keep the population stable/growing.
The UK is so “overcrowded” that its densest city, London, has 1 million fewer people than New York City despite being geographically three times larger.
“asylum seekers” are schooled, taught, the best things to say to get refugee status
Oh yes, they’re all nasty. Horrible, horrible people who are going to pollute our noble white British culture!
be liberal at other people’s expense, if it doesn’t cost YOU anything
Yes, because allowing someone to live and work in your country rather than be tortured and executed is “so expensive!”
Thanks for proving my point about Western sanctimony and hypocrisy.
In another discussion, I’m sure you’d waste no time talking about your progressive European values and how much Britain cares for its fellow man via useless welfare programs that actually DO cost money… yet when someone faces torture and DEATH for being who they are, you say “tough luck mate, Britain’s full up! Gotta send ya back to have your testicles crushed and then be publicly executed! Tough row, love!”
tallskin2
@Brian Miller – “The UK is so “overcroweded” and “concerned about overpopulation” that its government pays women to have children to keep the population stable/growing.”
What are you talking about, you ignorant fool. No, it doesn’t.
tallskin2
And Brian, you didn’t answer me about the policy of the USA
I await your answer
tallskin2
@Jason – you say: “Australia must be a very backward place.”
It may well be. But what is the situation for asylum seekers and refugees who claim they’re gay in your country?
It’s noteworthy that when called to account for their glib condemnations of other countries how people like Jason and Brian Miller go very quiet when asked about their own country’s policy!!
paulcanning
@Brian Miller
Britain isn’t allowed to tell people to ‘go home and be discrete’ anymore because of a Supreme Court decision [http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2010/07/phenomenal-decison-on-lgbt-asylum.html]. However this does not mean that people who are gay are not still being removed. What’s happening is similar to this case, which seems to revolve around his late application therefore meaning he therefore cannot be gay.
That is the only evidence cited for disproving him, it does not say if other evidence was provided but that late application was seen as undermining his credibility. This is often what happens here in the UK because the entire system revolves around finding cracks to undermine credibility. It does not matter if Blind Freddy could see that the person is gay – for example a person I’m helping who was actually being harassed in detention because his fellow countrymen knew he was gay – the point is to destroy credibility and remove them. That’s the job of Border agents, not to uphold the Refugee Convention and make sure people aren’t sent back to who knows what fate.
@JJ
Of course there are fakes but the system, again, is not set up in order to properly deal with them – I believe – anywhere in the world. Agents aren’t properly trained and LGBT advocates and others with an interest aren’t involved in order to help establish credibility – or otherwise.
I also think you are speaking anecdotally, from your own experience. In my experience the proportion of ‘fakes’ is overstated – but neither of us actually knows *and cases such as this one, which does not, in fact, definitively prove that the guy was a fake, would show up as a ‘fake’ when it may well not be.
@tallskin2
‘since the UK started allowing sexual orientation to be a reason for granting this the number of people turning up in the UK and claiming to be gay has rocketed. Yeah right, guys!!’
The UK has allowed persecution on grounds of sexual orientation as reason for sanctuary since 1999. There is absolutely no evidence of any vast influx like you claim. None. Because no-one gathers any statistics in the UK on such claims. There is however some evidence from elsewhere:
‘The main US LGBT asylum group Immigration Equality dealt with 80 cases in 2008. The Dutch Liberal MP Boris van der Ham asked authorities for details in 2008. They said six LGBT asylum seekers are expected in 2009 and 38 to 40 in total since 2006. According to the Asylum Documentation Program of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, 62 lesbians have been allowed to stay in the United States between 1994 and 2007 (out of 435 inquiries), and 643 gay men (out of 4,134 inquiries)’
http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2010/04/damning-report-says-practically-all-uk.html
ait10101
@jason: I lived there for ten years. Backward it is. I much prefer New Zealand.