This is for real. It is NOT a joke. This will be printed in the advocate today:
Iran_map_2 Maryam knew she was a lesbian from an early age, but in Iran, being gay is punishable by death. Facing far more than parental disapproval, she was kicked out of school, fired from a job, imprisoned, and tortured, all in an unsuccessful effort to change her sexual orientation. Finally, she escaped to France, where her asylum request was still pending at press time.
In this international exclusive, a lesbian victim of torture in the Islamic Republic of Iran speaks on the record for the first time about the horrors she suffered at the hands of a regime that has made homosexuality illegal and punishable by death. Maryam, 25, was expelled from school, forcibly hospitalized, arrested, and tortured for being a lesbian before finally escaping Iran. She eventually wound up in France, where she currently lives in an internment camp. Although she’s filed an application for asylum as a sexual refugee, given the conservative French government’s new crackdown on illegal immigrants, Maryam could be deported back to Iran at any moment. “I don’t know what I will do if the French government sends me back to where my execution pillar is awaiting me!” she says. Doug Ireland spoke to her by phone, aided by a Persian translator, from Paris, where she had traveled for a day to file documents for her asylum request. Here, in her own words, is Maryam’s story.