BAYREUTH – One of her last memories of Iran is a noisy party. It was back in 2009, and some 50 young people had gathered in a Tehran apartment. “We were happy, a lot of us were dancing,” says Samira Ghorbani Danesh, now 24.
But that same party –or more specifically the guests at the party, gay men and lesbians— has a lot to do with why Samira no longer lives in Tehran, why she fled to Germany.
Samira now lives in a home for women in northern Bavaria, terrified that German authorities will soon send her back to Iran where she never wants to set foot again.
“At the party, I wanted to get a little air and I went out on the balcony,” she recalls. Looking down at the street she got the fright of her life: there were three dark cars lined up, and heavy-set men were getting out of them.
“Every kid in Iran knows these people – members of the secret police. Drinking alcohol is forbidden in Iran; so is western music,” she says. And then there was the fact that at this party, the guys were kissing guys, and the women were kissing women.
“I was 15 or 16 when I realized I was a lesbian,” Samira says. But homosexuality in Iran is not only a social taboo. “If you’re caught, you go to jail,” says Katayun Pirawardi, also from Iran, who has been living in Germany since 1977.
Today, Pirawardi, 49, is involved with a Berlin-Brandenburg lesbian and gay association, but she knows the situation of gays and lesbians in Iran all too well. “If you can, you get out,” she says. The ones who stay have to keep their sexual orientation hidden. “People are very rarely arrested on charges of homosexuality. The authorities make up some kind of other charge.”
Time to hide
When she saw the cops get out of the cars and storm the building, Samira says she tried to warn the others but the music was too loud and nobody paid any attention. She herself fled to a neighboring apartment and hid while the people back at the party were being arrested. “I was so scared I could hardly think,” she remembers.
After it was all over she couldn’t simply return home. “My parents didn’t know I was a lesbian.” She says she assumed that the police had meanwhile gone to her family home and that her parents had learned of the arrest from them. Samira’s girlfriend S. had also been at the party; they’d been a secret couple for three years. They met when they were both studying architecture at university.
“We didn’t have any problem keeping our relationship secret. When we wanted to be together, we told our parents that we were working on a university project,” Samira says.
Samira has no idea how S. is doing now, or even where she is. She only knows that she was questioned by police and also that her parents received a visit from the police. “And I was so scared of my family –that they would seek revenge because I had publically shamed them,” she says.
So the young woman collected every cent she had, and left the country, crossing the border into Turkey with the help of a smuggler.
“Credible” danger?
She finally ended up in Germany, where she thought she was safe. She learned German. But now there is some question as to whether she will be allowed to stay in Germany: her application for asylum was refused by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), and her appeal was turned down by the Bayreuth Administrative Court on the grounds that Samira had not “credibly established that she was in danger in Iran.”
The court did recognize that homosexuality is punishable in Iran –with the death penalty for men; 100 lashes for women, and the death penalty after a fourth charge. “The judge in Bayreuth had some doubts about the plaintiff’s claims that the police were after her,” a court spokesperson told Die Welt.
“Why would I make something like that up, and leave my family and friends?” Samira asks. The court reached the verdict that she could live safely if she simply practiced the “unobtrusive way of life practiced by all homosexuals in Iran who don’t want any trouble.”
Samira says she feels abandoned: “I am so frightened, how could they send me back?” she asks, her voice breaking. The young woman had a month after the verdict was delivered to leave Germany: her papers are only valid until June 30.
Samira’s lawyer, Gisela Seidler, is not giving up. “Samira is ‘out” now, her case has aroused public attention,” she says – so a safe life in Iran is not possible. The lawyer has reapplied for asylum, and Samira hopes that this time authorities won’t let her down. Germany, she says, is the country where she can live how she wants, and love who she wants.
Read the original article in German
Photo – Amir Farshad Ebrahimi