In light of the recent controversy surrounding the decision to allow Learco Chindamo – the murderer of Philip Lawrence – to stay within the UK, attention should be drawn to the case of Pegah Emambakhsh.
As of the 13th August, Emambakhsh – an Iranian lesbian - faces deportation back to Iran. Ms Emambakhsh sought asylum in the UK in 2005. She escaped Iran after her lover had been arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by stoning. It is highly likely that if Ms Emambakhsh were to return to Iran she would suffer the same fate.
Despite this, however, the UK Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) has ruled that she would not be in any danger if she were to return – even though not only is the UK government fully aware of Emambakhsh’s hazardous predicament in Iran, but Iranian human rights campaigners themselves have stated that numerous gays and lesbians have been executed since the Ayatollah’s accession to power in 1979.
Having not lived in Italy for twenty-one years, Chindamo has been allowed to remain in the UK on release after having been jailed for life for the brutal murder of forty-eight-year-old headmaster Philip Lawrence twelve years ago.
Ms Emambakhsh is set, however, to face deportation, torture and certain death merely for her sexual orientation.
In August last year a Iranian woman in Germany, in an identical predicament, was allowed to stay in Germany by the Stuttgart courts. Its ruling was meant to set a binding precedent. Britain has clearly succeeded in misunderstanding this.
David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, described the UK government’s decision as “a stark demonstration of the clumsy incompetence of this Government’s human rights legislation” – an understatement at best.
This is truly, on the UK’s part, a flagrant misunderstanding not just of human rights, but also of the chasm between sending an innocent woman to be stoned to death in a viciously oppressive régime, and protecting a convicted murderer from enjoying too many sips of Chianti or too many slices of pizza alfresco in some quaint trattoria. Let’s hope the government can both rectify this “clumsy incompetence” and demonstrate some just moral sense.