File photo An Iranian hairdresser has been denied refugee status in New Zealand because the Immigration and Protection Tribunal does not believe his claims he was repeatedly interrogated and tortured because authorities thought he was gay. The man, in his late 20s, claims he fled Iran after being persecuted because he made friends with a gay couple. He said he was detained and beaten a number of times by members of the Ettela’at, or Ministry of Intelligence and National Security. The man said on one occasion he was held bound and naked and threatened with sexual assault with a baton, then kicked and beaten until he made a written confession and was released. He claimed that if he were to return to Iran he would again be detained and subjected to adverse attention from the Iranian authorities. The Tribunal’s decision to deny the man protected refugee status came down to his credibility, which it was far from convinced of. “The Tribunal rejects the appellant’s core claim to have befriended two homosexual men, and to have been subjected to an ongoing campaign of interrogation and physical mistreatment by the authorities because of that friendship,” it has ruled. “The Tribunal’s findings in that respect are not based upon any single aspect of the appellant’s account. However, having considered his claim in its entirety, the Tribunal finds that the appellant’s evidence is not truthful. “While his evidence was in many respects, as counsel submitted, consistently delivered, it was nonetheless implausibly devoid of meaningful content. The appellant’s inability to provide basic information consistent with the type of friendship he claimed to have enjoyed with ‘BB’ and ‘CC’ was simply inconsistent with a truthful account about an actual relationship.” The Tribunal cited the fact he did not know the last names of his gay friends, where they worked, or who their families were. “The Tribunal was left with the clear impression that the appellant was simply making up answers as he went along, in an attempt to cover up an implausible lack of knowledge about his supposed friends,” the decision reads. “The Tribunal does not accept that he has been seriously harmed for the reasons claimed and there is no credible evidence that the appellant is at risk of being detained or harmed by the Iranian authorities for those reasons in the future.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 9th July 2012 - 1:57pm