Simon Hughes's speech on the Deportation to States which Persecute on the Grounds of Sexuality and Gender Identity

Speech delivered on Sun 14th Sep 2008

In the last year I and all my team in our constituency office have become huge admirers of Mehdi Kazemi. Mehdi has already been referred to in this debate. Indeed, Mehdi's fight against deportation back to Iran may well have been the single individual campaign which led to this debate and this motion.

During the campaign for Mehdi to be allowed to stay in the UK which I had the privilege to lead as his MP, we met him and his family who live in the UK on a regular basis. It became clear to all of us who know Mehdi, that he would not have claimed asylum if he had not genuinely feared for his life. He would not have attempted to run away to Canada via the Czech Republic and then absconded from Germany to Holland before being brought back to Britain - all on his own and with no money - if he had not believed that torture or worse could have followed his arrest back home. He would not have given up his close relationship with his family in Tehran without the strongest possible fear for his safety.

Since the Home Secretary granted Mehdi permission to stay here for five years, nobody could have been more grateful or put his good fortune to better use than Mehdi. Immediately with our help he started to make applications to university. He received a place to study pharmacy. He has embarked on his access year

Phrases for government section

For the government to deport people, telling them to behave "discreetly" to "avoid repercussions" is to deny them their identity. We would not ask someone to hide their ethnicity or religious beliefs; neither can we do so for someone's sexuality.

Make no mistake, the situation for gay people in Iran and in many other countries in the world is dire.

The decisions that the Home Office make are quite literally ones of life or death.

Israfil Shiri and Hussein Nasseri - two gay Iranian asylum seekers - faced with deportation from the UK both chose to end their own lives in the most desperate of circumstances rather than return to face the horror of humiliation, torture and death for who they are and how they, as individuals, chose to live their lives.

The neglect and at times, lack of understanding, with which our government institutions have treated those who have sacrificed so much in an attempt to reach temporary safety on British shores, is both legally and morally wrong.

Article 3 of the UN Convention against Torture states that "No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." As signatories to the convention, it is Britain's obligation to give every case its fullest consideration and to err on the side of the individual.

Should we ask people to repress their identity, their sexuality - something at the very core of their being - to fit in with social customs which we find illiberal and abhorrent?

Cultural relativism only goes so far. The British have a proud heritage, from William Wilberforce and David Livingstone to Pankhurst and ??? of fighting and delivering social justice. The British government's current policy is a shameful rejection of that heritage.