AKA William

As I’ve written about quite a bit, the persecution faced by LGBT people in Iran is crushing. Recall that homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, although its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that homosexuality does not exist in Iran.

Fearing for his life Asghar Hedayat, a forty-year-old gay Iranian, in 2002 fled his home country, but, now, after years of appealing for asylum based on his sexual orientation, Hedayatis facing deportation from Norway back to his unstable homeland within the next 48 hours.

Via UK Gay News:

Asghar fled Iran in March 2002 for Denmark, where he applied for asylum on the grounds of his sexuality. But the application was turned down and he was told that he was to be deported.

Fearing for his life if he was returned to Iran, he fled again – this time to Norway.

Again, his asylum application was refused. But he had “five or six, I can’t remember” appeals against the original decision – all were turned down.

Now he has been told that he must leave Norway by January 25.

. . . “I was waiting for good news, everyday for the last seven years,” he told UK Gay News last night. “I was optimistic that I could start a normal life here in Norway. Unfortunately, it did not happen for me. “Now I have lost hope, energy, happiness, and future since I got negative answers from Norwegian authorities.

. . . In Iran, Asghar was in love with his boyfriend, Mr. J [for security reasons we can not publish his name as he is still in Iran]. Asghar said that he was so happy but that changed when his family forced him to get married.

It was really difficult time for Asghar and “J” as they could not ‘come out’ to their families and Asghar had no other reason to convince his family that he did not want to get married.

“She was a really pleasant woman, but, really, I did not want to spend my life with her – she deserved a better husband,” he told UK Gay News. “We lived together, but really we had nothing to share. I could not stop thinking about [Mr. J] for a moment.”

While living in the temporary asylum center, Hedayat created the video below, “Life Is Beautiful.”