Citation: 2021 RLLR 73
Tribunal: Refugee Protection Division
Date of Decision: October 20, 2021
Panel: Isis Marianne van Loon
Counsel for the Claimant(s): Juliette Ukpabi
Country: Iran
RPD Number: VC1-02405
Associated RPD Number(s): N/A
ATIP Number: A-2022-01594
ATIP Pages: N/A
DECISION
[1] MEMBER: This is the decision in the Refugee Protection Division in the claim of XXXX XXXX as a citizen of Iran who is claiming refugee protection pursuant to Section 96 and Subsection 97(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In rendering my reasons, I have considered and applied the Chairperson’s guidelines on women refugee claimants fearing gender related persecution as well as the Chairperson’s guidelines on proceedings before the IRB involving sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.
[2] Your allegations are set out in your Basis of Claim form and by your testimony, the following is a very brief summary. You are a lesbian and you fear persecution in Iran as a result.
DETERMINATION
[3] I find you are a Convention refugee as you have established a well-founded fear of persecution based on a Convention ground.
IDENTITY
[4] Your identity as a national of Iran is established by your testimony and the supporting documentation on file including a certified true copy of your passport in Exhibit 1.
CREDIBILITY
[5] The presumption before me is that your testimony is true; however, this could be rebutted in appropriate circumstances if there were inconsistencies or contradictions, omissions or undetailed testimony and the Presumption does not apply to inferences or speculation for which there is no evidentiary basis. You provided in Exhibit 4 credible documentation in support of your claim.
[6] There are text exchanges between you and your father where you are asserting your right to make your own decisions and he is stating that you don’t have that right and that you need to return and get married. Your father states in these exchanges that in awhile you’re going to run out of money and you’ll come begging and he threatens to kill you if you don’t return. You reply that he should stop threatening you and said that you would rather die in a corner of a street than have your father or someone else that he has chosen for you control your freedom, your life, and your right to decided.
[7] There are also exchanges between your uncle XXXX and your father. Your father accuses XXXX of using black magic on you to make you turn against him and XXXX tells your father that you are able to decide for yourself. Your friend XXXX writes from Iran and states that you came out as a lesbian when you were about 13. She further describe a situation that you would face in Iran where you would have to marry and would risk persecution if your sexual orientation were ever exposed and XXXX included a copy of her passport.
[8] There is a letter from the Centre for Newcomers which confirms your attendance at various LGBTQ+ events and workshops and you provide copies of certificates of completion for some of these workshops. Your uncle XXXX letter confirms that he sponsored you to Canada as he was aware of the daily abuse that you were enduring and your lack of safety in Iran. He found a school and a place for you to live and he was able to convince your father to let you come to study.
[9] At the time, your uncle was unaware of your sexuality but you came out to him after your father began to pressure you to return to marry a man of your father’s choosing. Your uncle actually – threat, was threatened by your father and your uncle describes the religious intolerance of your family in Iran and states that as a lesbian woman, you have no place in Iran and you would be persecuted and he provided a copy of his photo ID. I found these documents were relevant and they corroborate your allegation that you are a lesbian.
[10] Furthermore, your testimony was straightforward and forthcoming. You spoke without hesitation and in detail. There were no inconsistencies between your testimony or contradiction between your testimony or the other evidence before me. I found you to be a credible witness and therefore I believe what you have alleged in support of your claim. I find that the persecution that you face has a nexus to one of the five convention grounds, that of your membership in a particular social group as a lesbian, a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Therefore, I have assessed your claim under Section 96.
[11] I could equally have analyzed your claim on the basis of your gender alone as a woman from Iran, but it wasn’t necessary to do so given the former. In order to be considered a Convention refugee, you have to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution. This includes both a subjective basis, an objective basis, and it has to be forward looking. Based on your testimony, supporting documents, and the country condition documents, I find you have a well-founded fear of persecution for the following reasons: You told me how you had to hide yourself when you were in Iran. You could never speak about your sexuality with anyone but that one friend, the one person in Iran who knows about your sexuality. You tried your best to act appropriately, you said you did everything right so that no one would suspect you, you tried to conform to what a girl should be and act like, you never disobeyed, you never did anything rebellious because you were scared to death. You said from the moment that you discovered your sexual orientation and in light of the view of Iranian people about LGBTQ people, you hid yourself and until this day, no one in Iran but that one friend and your uncle who lives here in Canada knows about your sexual orientation because you were too frightened to tell them.
[12] Two months before you finished high school in Canada, your father called and told you that he had found you someone to marry. You refused and he insisted. You explained to me that if you don’t go back and marry this man in Iran, your father perceives it as ruining his reputation in the community and inaudible honour as a man. You said that when he first told you you had to return, you tried to drag it out, you said you couldn’t get a flight, the pandemic and so on, but you hadn’t even actually checked. You just said it to put him off. You dragged it out until June when you were supposed to graduate but in the meantime, you had searched online for help and you applied for asylum and continued to refuse your father’s demands and you eventually blocked him from contacting you.
[13] For a while you heard nothing but then you received e-mails in October 20. They were basically death threats. Your father told you you were going to run out of money and that your uncle would stop supporting you and then you were going to have to come back to Iran. So I find that you have induced sufficient credible evidence to establish a subjective fear of persecution if you were to return to Iran. You told me that your father and in fact the whole Islamic Republic believes that a father owns his children, especially when you are talking about his girl, his female children. You have no say and no choice in Iran, you cannot make a decision of your own because based on Islamic beliefs, women are only half that of men.
[14] You described to me your first job at XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, how happy you were to have this job because you had not even been allowed to go to the grocery to shop on your own in Iran, and you had never been allowed to work. When you were informed that you had got the job, you were so excited that you said you were walking on clouds, it was one of the happiest moments of your life and you have been there now since XXXX 2020 and you’re now being promoted and how hard you worked to get that promotion. You also spoke about how happy you were simply to have a savings account as you had never been allowed to have one in Iran. You told me about coming out to your uncle. You said you gathered all of your courage and it was extremely hard, you were unable to look in his eyes and you felt like what you were saying was wrong and sometimes you said you still feel wrong for being like this referring to your sexuality but you said your uncle is an amazing man and he accepted you, He said “It’s okay, I don’t care who you are going to love as long as you’re happy” and you said that is what you had wanted to hear your entire life. I asked you what would need to change in Iran for you to live there safely, and you had no shortage of things that needed to change. You said the whole government needs to go, it’s under the Islamic Republic, and it’s run by religious leaders. You said that Islam is really involved with the law, everything is based on Islam and Sharia law. For you to be able to live freely as a lesbian in Iran, they would have to separate religion from the law so that they wouldn’t judge and punish people based on religion.
[15] You said LGBTQ+ people are criminals based on Sharia law, you don’t have an identity of your own, and it is considered a form of sickness. If you are perceived or exposed as homosexual, you need to go in front of a judge and defend yourself and convince them that you are not, and if you can’t do that, you will be punished and the punishments range from flogging to the death penalty. You said because of the way the country is run, the people have developed the same ideas and opinions as the religious leaders about the LGBTQ community and socially LGBTQ people are not accepted in Iran and the country documentation is consistent with your testimony on this. The U.S. Department of State confirms human rights abuses including crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons, and the criminalization of LGBTI status or conduct. The law criminalizes consensual same sex activity punishable by death, flogging, or a lesser punishment. The UK home office reports that the Islamic penal code criminalizes same sex sexual relationships and it confirms punishments ranging from lashes to the death penalty.
[16] LBGTI persons face a variety of abuse by government authorities including beatings, verbal assaults, rape, sexual assault, and torture. Furthermore, not only are LGBTI persons who openly express their sexual orientation and/or gender identity or expression likely to face mistreatment and persecution from state actors, they will also face discrimination and ill treatment from societal actors which by its nature and repetition is likely to amount to persecution. According to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, in present day Iran, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals suffer from human rights violations and are denied the basic freedom of being who they are. Abuses are perpetrated by the Iranian government, the judiciary, and by non-state actors such as schools, communities, and families. No one is held accountable for these serious violations of basic rights. So I find the treatment of LGBTI people in Iran amounts to persecution and accordingly, I conclude that your fear of persecution in Iran is well-founded.
STATE PROTECTION AND INTERNAL FLIGHT ALTERNATIVE
[17] States are presumed to be able to protect their citizens; however, in this case, the agent of persecution is the state and the persecution would face is at the hands of the authorities so accordingly I find there is no state protection available to you and the presumption of state protection is rebutted. The state is in control of all of its territories and therefore I find there is a serious possibility of persecution throughout Iran and there is no viable Internal Flight Alternative where you could safely relocate in the country available to you in your particular circumstances.
CONCLUSION
[18] Based on the totality of the evidence, I conclude that you are a Convention refugee. Accordingly, I have accepted your claim.
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