What will happen to Pegah Emambakhsh now?
Roberto Malini - EveryOne Group - 07.09.2007 21:22
Unfortunately it is easy to read the minds of Gordon Brown and
Jacqui Smith in this moment. They are angry because the problem
of the arbitrary and unjust deportations has come to light.
I hope I'm wrong, but the history of persecution generally repeats
a pattern. I believe the UK Government is once again studying
a way to refuse Pegah asylum...
What will happen to Pegah now? What will happen to human
rights in the United Kingdom?
by Roberto Malini - EveryOne Group -  roberto.malini@annesdoor.com - www.annesdoor.com
Dear Friends, the Campaign of Flowers, as well as the entire
Campaign for Pegah, is based on the recovery of the values of
brotherhood and solidarity in actions for the
defence of human rights.
We live in a difficult age and unfortunately the governments, the
magistracy and often the most well-known humanitarian
organisations in the world have relegated the Universal Declaration
of Human rights, the Convention on the Status of Refugees and other
rules on which we base our level of civilisation and respect of
minorities behind other priorities: security, immigration
control, the defence of nations and families.
The EveryOne Group is committed to defending the dignity and lives
of refugees, but also to reminding the European governments
that laws concerning human rights exist, they are very clearly stated
and they must not be deliberately misinterpreted. To deport the
refugees towards unjust sentences is a crime against humanity and
there are no alibis for governments who are stained with such
crimes.
To sacrifice human rights for "security", for the concept
of “nation” is the same principle on which the National Socialist
Party based its rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s.
The EveryOne Group was created from an ideal and grows every day.
We work day and night in contact with the activists,
with the people who believe in human rights and with the better side
of the political world in order to contribute towards changing things.
Many people are asking us what will happen to Pegah now. Friends,
I have been studying persecutions and genocides
for the last 30 years, I have published books, made documentaries
and organized exhibitions, I am the curator of museums
about the Holocaust and Genocides.
Unfortunately it is easy to read the minds of Gordon Brown and
Jacqui Smith in this moment. They are angry because the problem
of the arbitrary and unjust deportations has come to light.
I hope I'm wrong, but the history of persecution generally repeats
a pattern. I believe the UK Government is once again studying
a way to refuse Pegah asylum, motivating the decision
thus: “Pegah is unable to prove she is homosexual and
therefore we believe her case has been inflated”.
I don't believe they will deport her to Iran because they know
she would be faced with torture and murder. According to the
Convention (that they are well aware of) they will give her
all the time she needs to find a third country willing to grant her asylum.
And Italy will enter the game. With this formula, the UK Government
is confident of savings its face, saving the
political career of Jacqui Smith (which is otherwise at risk) and,
after a period of caution for fear of an international scandal,
continue the deportations of refugees towards their death.
This is the truth, and if those who read these lines, think it over
and continue to accept this situation, they will become accomplices
of indifference and the new genocide.
The members of the EveryOne group will not do that, they will
continue to speak out for and write about the truth. And there’s only one truth:
homosexuality cannot be proven, because it is a state of the
mind. To ask for video or photographic evidences would be the most
serious violation of the intimacy and dignity of a human being.
To ask for signed testimonies would mean exposing the witnesses
in their native land to persecution and sentences. Moreover,
it would be a violation of the privacy of the witnesses themselves,
even in a democratic country, not only in a regime, to force them to
”come out”.
To ask for documents related to a sentence in the countries
of origin goes against human rights conventions that state
that the request for testimony must be related to local
laws. If in Iran homosexuality is persecuted, those who declare their
homosexuality in the country in which they request asylum have the right
to be recognized as a refugee and to be granted asylum. Without any "ifs"
or "buts". The rest is just criminal and repressive politics.
To get back to Pegah, she is an extraordinary woman and is a
symbol of the new fury against the weak and different. We must
continue to watch over her, but we must also ask
quite firmly for respect of the international laws that protect
refugees in the future. We must also
urge the media - TV and press - not to fill our heads with
frivolity and false problems, but to help us when we bring
cases of violation of human rights to their attention, because the British press
has shown itself to be at the service of those in power, to be unable
to understand and report the truth, at the cost of hiding
serious cases like Pegah Emambakhsh’s.
If the individual citizens don't represent the pride, the freedom
and the civilization of the United Kingdom, the country will slip
into a regime that the citizens themselves are creating.
We have the same problems here in Italy and we must commit ourselves
in the same way. There is a campaign underway right now,
one of discrimination and oppression against the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies).
Like during the Nazi period, the authorities are pursuing
pedlars and beggars and the press is supporting this persecution.
And as if this weren’t enough, we too treat the problem of asylum for refugees
in a superficial and unjust manner. More flowers are
needed!
A shower of flowers and common sense! We must stick by Pegah,
my friends, and keep our eyes open wide, so that the horizon of
human rights won't become just a distant line.
 E-Mail: roberto.malini@annesdoor.com  Website: http://www.annesdoor.com
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