The case of Pegah Emambakhsh and the great need to defend people persecuted because of their sexual preferences.
Pegah Emambakhsh is a young lesbian Iranian woman. She has been sentenced to death by the judges of the Islamic Republic of Iran because of her homosexuality. She took refuge in Sheffied, Great Britain, where she sought political asylum. This right was denied her with the justification that she cannot prove she is a lesbian. In Germany too, a young lesbian woman, Jasmine K. requested political asylum, but she too was turned down by the authorities with the same justification: she cannot prove she is lesbian.
The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” protects those who are persecuted because of their diversity without them having to prove it. Homosexuality is a state that exists from the moment a human being declares to be such. Even the State of Israel took in Jewish refugees from the Holocaust on the mere basis of their declarations. Many of them were without identification papers.
This is the only way to respect human rights. The alternative would be the humiliating demonstration of one’s sexual preferences, pointless clinical and psychological testing and inquisitorial procedures damaging to a person’s privacy and human dignity.
The EveryOne group firmly requests that Pegah Emambakhsh, Jasmine K and all the other people persecuted for their homosexuality be taken in as refugees by countries that consider themselves civilized.
