Darkside Rainbow

…nnngghhh. [insert entirely graceless faceplant into a pillow here] It’s morning already? Sweet honkin’ Jeebus, why is it morning already? Here; read this while I go make some mother-snortin’ coffee.

US Set to Deport Gay Iranian - ZNet/ZMag

President George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not agree on much, but tragically they may find common ground about the disposability of Hassan Parhizkar’s life.

Since November 7, a mild-mannered 40-year-old gay Iranian businessman from Rockville, Maryland has been sitting in jail in the Frederick County, Maryland Detention Center, housed with common criminals, in the living hell of limbo between the freedom he has known since he came to the United States as a young man 17 years ago and the certain persecution, imprisonment, or worse that will be his fate as a gay man if he is sent back to Iran.

A deportation order to send him back to Iran has been issued, and any day he could be put on a plane back to Tehran, where he was born.

“I am very afraid, and so very frustrated,” Hassan Parhizkar told me in a truncated, collect telephone call from jail.

“My asylum request has never been before an immigration judge. I just don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do…” he added in a voice choked with tears.

“I work hard, I pay my taxes, and I live a quiet life without bothering anybody,” Parhizkar told this reporter.

Done reading? Good; I’m done brewing (and even marginally awake now).

The article goes on to tell such a deliberate tearjerker of a story that I had to stop and Google the validity of the source (and I still have my doubts; why isn’t this being covered anywhere else?). Hassan has been preyed upon by a man falsely representing himself as an attorney, arrested by the morality police in his own country for having a relationship with another man (but homosexuals don’t exist in Iran, do they, Mr. President?) and now, after struggling to make a life for himself as a business owner, faces deportation to a country that will likely make sure that he doesn’t bring that gay census count from 0 to 1. No doubt adding one more to the body count is seen as less heinous than allowing a known homosexual to make a liar of Iran’s president.

I can only hope that he won’t be deported once he’s had a fair hearing. The U.S. has standards set in place for situations such as this, in which if the illegal immigrant faces undue punishment, torture, the death penalty, etc. then the U.S. will grant them asylum. It’s a public relations nightmare, after all, for a country’s immigration services to say “You’ve been living here illegally? Nope, back home to the noose you go, we’ll send flowers for your grave.” No, I’m not going to go off on a Bush-bashing tirade assuming that of course he’d want to send the man back to Iran to die because he’s evil, homophobic, uneducated, thick-headed, the usual rhetoric. Bush probably doesn’t even know what the man’s name is yet, but if it gets to the point where the issue’s brought to his direct attention then he’ll pretty much have no choice about granting asylum lest he stir up one hot mess. Even if you trust Bush to be stupid, trust his advisors not to be that idiotic. So honestly, especially if this picks up more media coverage, I’m not too worried about Hassan Parhizkar. I do feel sorry for him, though.

If you want to do something about his situation, there’s a petition going around to grant him asylum. This may be my sleep-deprived, I-am-a-b*tch-in-the-mornings state talking, but it’s fairly useless beyond making people feel better about themselves. Stick your name on the petition, pat yourselves on the back. The power of petition just isn’t as strong as it used to be, especially at the federal level. But hey, go sign it anyway. Better to do one tiny, useless thing than to do absolutely nothing at all.

My cranky butt is out of here.

Hassan Parhizkar, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran, homophobia, anti-gay sentiment, illegal immigration, asylum, deportation

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