The government of the Netherlands has decided to offer asylum to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Iraqis after the Dutch immigration minister found that LGBT Iraqis faced “serious risks” to their lives and safety.
The Dutch government asked the minister, Geert Leers, to carry out an inquiry into the status of LGBT people in Iraq following a horrifying wave of brutal anti-gay murders in that country last March. According to Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Leers temporarily halted the deportations of gay Iraqis in June pending the results of his investigation.
RNW reports that there is still some confusion as to how Iraqi asylum-seekers will prove their sexual orientation to immigration officials:
Asylum-seekers will have to prove that they are homosexual before their request is granted. It is unclear just how this will be checked and, says van Dijk [a Dutch LGBT rights activist], it will lead to difficulties, “especially because people will have to prove something they’ve taught themselves to disguise out of fear for their entire life. It will be a very tricky situation and the immigration officials carrying out the interviews will need special training.”
It’s good to see the Netherlands — long a trailblazer on LGBT rights issues — stepping to the forefront yet again and doing what it can to protect sexual and gender minorities who’ve managed to escape from one of the most dangerous places on earth for the LGBT community.
Bravo to the government of the Netherlands!
To clarify, what is special about this news is not that a country grants asylum to people who are persecuted because they are LGBT. Most Western countries, including the US and UK of course, have been doing it regularly for years.
What is new is that the Netherlands is the first country to my knowledge that does not require proof of actual persecution if you come from a specific country. If you come from Iraq, anti-LGBT persecution will be presumed; you don’t need to prove it (though you still have to prove that you are actually LGBT, which is difficult and generally inconsistent with anti-discrimination law).
In many countries (e.g. UK, Canada), it works the other way. They maintian lists of countries where persecution will be presumed NOT to have occurred, and LGBT asylum seekers from those listed countries are summarily deported back to them unless they can quickly prove persecution and being LGBT. But, to my knowledge, no country until now had a list that worked in the opposite way, until Netherlands in effect created a list with Iraq on it.
COC Netherlands is very happy that the Dutch minister for Asylum Gert Leers has taken this decision. COC has lobbyd hard for this ministerial decision on Iraqi LGBT asylum seekers for which there was by the way a precedent: a similar decision was taken in 2006 by a previous Dutch minister for Asylum concerning Iranian LGBT asymlum seekers. Since then they get asylum in the Netherlands when they can sufficiently prove to be Iranian and LGBT. Although the concern of which COC Netherlands director Koen van Dijk speaks in the RNW article is quiet understandable, the ruling for Iranian LGBT asylum seekers has worked quiet satisfactory as far as we know.
Really good news. I hope other countries will follow suit.
It’s a shame this is actually a story.
This should be standard policy/procedure across the board.
Good for the Netherlands..and Peter HArgmier is rights. It is a travesty this is even necessary due to the cultural and religious bigotry of many people in Iraq. Sad.
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