Benyamin Gholizadeh is now an Iranian political refugee in Turkey. However, the story behind how he found himself in this situation is a long one. Before the summer of 2009, Gholizadeh was imprisoned in the Islamic Republic of Iran because he was the site manager of a service that helps Iranians gain access to satellite television. While the Iranian regime sought to punish him for installing satellite dishes in various homes, they raided his home in order to see if additional charges could be brought against him and there, they found items on his computer and books in his home that presented them with such an opportunity. In some of the videos on his computer, he was speaking out against the Islamist regime in Iran. Following that, his case was transferred to the Special Spiritual Court, who in turn transferred his file to the Security Court and then to the Revolutionary Court.
Meanwhile, Gholizadeh was imprisoned in the infamous Evin Prison, where he was tortured to the point that his spine broke down and he now needs neck surgery in order to fix the damage that was done to his body: “I don’t even recall how many days I was tortured. I was humiliated always. There was no signs of humanity. I was not given any mercy by the court and the court found me guilty of insulting the religious and spiritual leaders and punished me with two years’ imprisonment.” However, after Gholizadeh spent six months in solidarity confinement regular ward, his father sold his home so that he could be released on bail and get badly needed medical treatment.
While Gholizadeh was in the hospital, he received a summons letter stating that he would recover in the hospital and then serve two years in prison. But after the election, he received a letter from the Revolutionary Court stating that someone complained against him. His lawyer then discovered that a lot of additional charges were going to be brought against him aside from possessing satellite dishes and insulting the religious spiritual leaders. These included blasphemy, insulting the Prophet Muhammed, and insulting Iran’s government. His lawyer at this point warned him that given who the presiding judge was and the previous charges against him, he was likely to get the death penalty. In 2010, Gholizadeh decided to flee Iran and move to Turkey.
According to Gholizadeh, it has been eight years and no third country has accepted him as a political refugee. He was already denied refugee status in the United States and Canada after agents working for the Iranian regime via the use of an official interpreter brought false reports against him. Even though video documentation delivered to a Turkish court proved that they were false reports invented by agents working for the Iranian regime, the United States and Canada both did not to date take back their rejections. To the contrary, those that delivered the false reports were given permission to enter into the US and he is still stuck in Turkey: “Every time my case was referred by the UN to a country, unknown people with the help of interpreters made up cases against me. As a result, I even doubt the authenticity of the case the UN has made for me in Turkey. Now the UN is telling me: ‘Since we referred your case to two countries and they rejected you, we can’t refer your case to any other country and you must stay in Turkey the rest of your life without being settled.’”
Iranian human rights activist Kaveh Taheri explained that Gholizadeh’s case is not atypical: “The Iranian regime interferes with the political refugees via its puppets (fake refugees) and they make routine problems for refugees living in Turkey. The fake refugees steal the refugees’ belongings and money. They give them problems every day in order to prevent them from acting against the Iranian regime. The regime has its hand everywhere in the UN, human rights organizations and the media. They can easily send false reports.” Furthermore, in an article he wrote for the Borujerdi Civil Rights Group, Taheri explained: “A problem that is facing the Iranian refugees is incorrect translations by UNHCR translators due to a lack of knowledge in Farsi, causing many of the refugee cases to be denied.”
Iranian human rights activist Shabnam Assadollahi believes that the real reason Canada sought to reject him is not because the US rejected him but rather because the damage the torture caused to his body would make it difficult for him to work and be self-sufficient but Gholizadeh stressed that he has the skills to work with any digital equipment and he also works well with animals, especially cats. But so far, these pleas have not helped. Iranian human rights activist Kaveh Taheri has a different explanation for Canada’s reaction: “The government looks for cheap labor, not activists. They easily accept non-activists because they have no possibility of protesting against the government. On the other hand, the government has big deals with the Iranian regime and they ask them not to accept real activists so they don’t accept activists easily.”
According to a report by the Borujerdi Civil Rights Group, “The International Catholic Migration Commission mainly allows non-activists while former political prisoners and activists remain on resettlement row for a long period of time. In addition, ethnic minorities such problems with resettlement because just a few countries accept them for resettlement grants and they spend a lot time in Turkey before going to a third country. Many reports indicate that Kurds wait for years, sometimes 20 years. Meanwhile, activists report that the ICMC expedites resettlement for apologist reformers for the regime to six months.”
For Gholizadeh, the long wait and potentially being stranded in Turkey forever would not be so problematic were it not for the mistreatment that he endures in Turkey on a daily basis: “Now, I have no money left. I don’t know what to do. I started my asylum seeking process when I was 24 and now I am 32. I have no hope for life. I am ready to donate my body parts so that they can mercy kill me and make me rid of this life. I can’t even be a Turkish citizen. I can’t work. It has been eight years of me making signatures every week so that I won’t be deported. My ID is only a print that no office or bank or organization would accept.”
According to Turkish Jewish journalist Rafael Sadi, it is possible for Gholizadeh to buy his way out of this predicament but only if he has money: “If they have money, they can do everything. They can open a business, company and even to work everywhere they like. If they don’t have enough money, they will suffer a lot and be obliged to work under minimum wage. The refugees have no right to elect and be elected.” According to Sadi, Iranian refugees have a greater potential to succeed in Turkey than the Syrians generally speaking and Turkey accepts people much easier than many other countries. However, it should be noted that none of this applies to Gholizadeh, who cannot due to his injuries work jobs that require heavy physical labor and who does not have the funds to improve his situation within the country.
According to Iranian human rights activist Shabnam Assadollahi, after the 2009 Iranian elections, many political refugees from Iran such as Taheri and Gholizadeh went to Turkey, where they were forced “to deal with different hardships under the Turkish government that has close diplomatic and economic relations with Iran. The political activist Iranians cross the Iran-Turkey border under horrifying conditions and flee from the terror in Iran but find themselves caught in another kind of prison –they are unable to speak Turkish, are forbidden by the Turkish police from leaving their assigned cities, and in effect are barred from working or engaging in political activity while being left with no means of support beyond the little financial aid they have brought with them.”
“According to a report by Resettlement.EU, while Turkey is a signatory to the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol, it maintains the Convention’s ‘geographical limitation, meaning only Europeans can be considered as refugees,” Assadollahi noted. “Non-European refugees are granted temporary asylum seeker status and the UNHCR is responsible for their registration as well as for finding durable solutions. To date, the only exception is the temporary protection granted to Syrian nationals seeking international protection, who began arriving in June 2011." She claims that the Turkish government has adopted a new migration and asylum seeker law that will strengthen refugee protection but won’t lift its geographical limitation: “Turkey denies permanent refugee status to Iranians and disperses them over 32 small cities around the country for the at least 3 years that it can take the UNHCR’s overstretched officials to assess their asylum claims and find countries that will accept them. Many Iranian refugees with political cases who are flagged by Khamenei’s special agents in Turkey mysteriously won’t be accepted by a third country and remain in Turkey for years. Some silently die, some commit suicide, and some get deported back to Iran.”
JERUSALEMONLINE Analysis: The plight Benyamin Gholizadeh