Samira Mohyeddin is a Toronto-based journalist and the host and producer of the podcast Gay Girl Gone.
“Toronto is a place many of us dream of. A place of hope. To be able to live your life as you are. Arriving here is like a rebirth in many ways.”
Saeed Ghorbani was describing to me how LGBTQ Iranians, fleeing Iran, imagine Toronto. Many Canadians may not know this but the city is the final destination in a quasi-underground railroad for hundreds of queer Iranians trying to escape the country, which is one of six countries which imposes the death penalty for homosexuality and one of 62 that criminalizes it. Tehran, Turkey, Toronto. That’s the route if you’re lucky. Saeed spent five years waiting in Turkey before he could legally come to Toronto.
“Imagine being somewhere for years where you can’t work and can’t physically leave and the threat of deportation back to Iran just hangs over you the entire time,” he told me.
Since September, 2018, the UNHCR no longer processes asylum seekers in Turkey. The Turkish government is now responsible for that, which has made it hard to get specific numbers on how many LGBTQ Iranians are claiming refugee status in Turkey and waiting to be transferred to a safe country. According to the country’s Directorate-General of Migration Management, 1,400 Iranians sought protection status from Turkey in 2020 and according to Saeed, there were about 400 queer Iranians in Turkey when he was there, all hoping to come to Toronto.
Saeed, who has been in Canada for five years now, co-founded an Iranian-Canadian queer organization called Simorgh in 2023. The group takes its name from an ancient Persian mythological bird which acts as a union between the earth and sky. The non-profit is dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of the LGBTQ community in Iran and helping those living in asylum limbo who are waiting to come to Canada. Last year Simorgh organized the largest group of queer Iranians and allies to march in Toronto’s Pride Parade.
I was one of them.
While the Iranian government was busily quashing protests on the streets of Tehran, we were marching in the streets of Toronto. Some marching along the parade route, were holding images of those killed by the Iranian regime. I use the word “march” on purpose because for many of us who come from countries who persecute and prosecute homosexuality, Pride is not a parade. It is a march. It is political. It was an amazing feeling to move together as an Iranian LGBTQ community, one that doesn’t have to walk in the shadows of our adopted home.
“It’s time that we as queer people fit ourselves into the wider community of Iranians who are protesting against this government,” said Saeed. “We are one of the most persecuted minorities in Iran and we will no longer be silent. None of us are free, till all of us are free.”
This year, Toronto’s Pride Parade falls on the same weekend as Iran’s snap presidential elections. Former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was prevented from running again. A two term president from 2005 to 2013, he famously said “There are no homosexuals in Iran,” while speaking at Columbia University back in 2007. Although the audience erupted in laughter at the absurdity of his statement, in many ways he was right. Since the 1979 revolution, the attempted erasure of Iran’s LGBTQ community has been systemic, with queer Iranians living life underground or having to make the precarious journey overseas. Death or displacement? Not much of a choice really.
In the past decade, the number of Iranian LGBTQ asylum seekers accepted into Canada has dropped dramatically. With every new war, LGBTQ asylum seekers get moved to the bottom of the list. Latoya Nugent, head of engagement at Rainbow Railroad, the global not-for-profit that helps at-risk LGBTQ people worldwide, told me that Canada needs to adopt a quicker way to get queer people to safety. One idea is to adopt the U.S.’s Safe Mobility Office (SMO) initiative, which groups multiple stages of the asylum claim process, instead of allowing weeks, if not months, to take place between each part of the process. Saeed, who came to Canada with the help of Rainbow Road, said hundreds more queer Iranians are still waiting in Turkey. “Some of the people there have been waiting for almost 10 years now,” he said. Imagine: A decade spent stateless, with no ability to start a new life.
On June 28, Iranians will go to the polls while another group of Iranians 9,000 kilometres away will be getting ready to hit the streets. Simorgh is organizing another march this year, as part of Toronto’s Pride Parade, and turnout is expected to be even higher than their first one last year. The same can’t be said for Iran’s presidential elections. The latest polling from GAMAAN Research, a Netherlands based non-profit research group, shows just 22 per cent of the population plans to vote. Iranians know it will make no difference who is at the helm of an impotent presidency. The ballot box is an exercise in futility in Iran’s totalitarian theocracy. Iranians know that real power is held in the hands of one man, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and he is infallible.
Earlier this month, Canada listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp as a terrorist entity. The same entity that does the bidding of the judiciary that enforces Iran’s draconian laws against homosexuality. Canada is revered globally as a place of refuge for the LGBTQ community and Toronto figures prominently, particularly in the hearts and minds of many Iranian youth who are at risk and waiting in dire conditions in Turkey. Canada can and must do more to live up to its reputation.