FOR GAY ARMENIAN REFUGEE, PRAYERS FOR ASYLUM FINALLY ANSWERED
ARMENIAN REFUGEE JOINS TREND OF GAYS GRANTED ASYLUM IN U.S.
Armen Grigoryan Among Those Attacked Outside Church
Roanoke Times,
Last edited: February 14, 2005
“Now, I’m free. I can stay in this country. I can start working. I
can start building my life back from zero.”
By Kimberly O’brien, The Roanoke Times
>From the time he was about 11, Armen Grigoryan knew he was different.
But for years, throughout adolescence, college and his career as a
dentist, he never acted on it.
He never, ever told anyone he was gay.
In Armenia, that could mean prison.
Then someone, suspecting Grigoryan was gay, threatened to tell
authorities, and all hell broke loose. He was beaten, at one point
suffering a broken nose and a head injury. He was blackmailed. His
car was vandalized. There is more, he said, but it is private and
difficult to remember, let alone talk about.
“It was so bad, it’s hard to register,” he said.
Fearful for his life, and tired of not being true to himself, Grigoryan
left his home, his family, his friends and his dentistry practice. So
about a year ago, he applied for a tourist visa, flew to the United
States and ended up in Roanoke.
He didn’t go back.
Instead, he applied for asylum, listing his reason as the thing he
never admitted in his own country:
He was gay.
After months of waiting, an interview with the Immigration and
Naturalization Service and lots of worrying, Grigoryan got the answer
he was hoping for Monday – recommendation for asylum in the United
States. Although there’s one more step – the FBI has to check
his fingerprints to make sure he’s stayed out of trouble –
Grigoryan’s asylum is a pretty sure thing.
“I was abused. I was used as a person in my country,” the 28-year-old
said the day after getting his good news. “Now, I’m free. I can
stay in this country. I can start working. I can start building my
life back from zero.”
In finding solace thousands of miles from home, Grigoryan joins a
growing number of people who have sought asylum in the past decade
because of sexual orientation. Although the INS doesn’t keep track
of how many gays and lesbians seek asylum, partly because of privacy
issues, lawyers who work with such asylum seekers say the numbers
are growing.
“It’s a recent thing,” said Adam Francoeur, a legal assistant
for Washington, D.C., attorney Elizabeth McGrail, who handled
Grigoryan’s case. “There seem to be more and more, as the laws
become more liberal.”
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, based in San
Francisco, reports at least 400 cases in which homosexuals have been
granted asylum since 1990. That year, Congress removed homosexuality
as a disqualification for admission to the United States, and a gay
Cuban man was granted asylum.
In 1994, then-Attorney General Janet Reno declared the case a
binding precedent for all immigration judges and courts. In doing so,
homosexuals became accepted as a group that could receive asylum.
The United States grants asylum to people who have a well-founded fear
of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political
opinion or membership in a particular social group. Gays and lesbians,
the 1994 precedent established, constitute a social group.
“Since 1994, there have been hundreds of cases,” said Pradeep Singla,
staff attorney with the New York-based Lesbian and Gay Immigration
Rights Task Force. “We are receiving more and more calls. As the gay
men and lesbians gain more visibility in other countries, they are
facing persecution.”
Amnesty International, which in June published a 69-page report
on torture and ill treatment based on sexual identity, gives these
examples of persecution among stories from about 30 countries:
In Namibia, Africa, the home affairs minister was reported on state
television last year to have urged new police officers to “eliminate”
gay men and lesbians “from the face of Namibia.”
In November 1996, four men arrested for “gross indecency” in Kingston,
Jamaica, were forced to remove their clothes and stand naked in public
view at an airport police station until the next day. Consensual sex
between men is punishable by up to 10 years in prison with hard labor.
In Malaysia, “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” is
punishable by up to 20 years in prison and whipping. In 1998, two
men sentenced to six monthsâ’ prison time for “outrages on decency”
were stripped naked and forced to simulate the sexual acts of which
they were accused.
Under interpretations of Islamic law, punishment for sex outside
marriage, including same-sex behavior, can result in up to 100 lashes
for unmarried people and stoning to death for married people. In
Afghanistan, men were reportedly crushed to death in 1998 and 1999
after being convicted of sodomy by a Taliban court. And in Chechnya,
criminal code allows for the death penalty for male homosexual acts.
“If laws exist, they can be the basis of persecution,” said Sydney
Levy, communications director for the International Gay and Lesbian
Human Rights Commission. “If the laws donâ’t exist, there still
can be persecution.”
In Armenia – a former Soviet republic of 3.5 million people bordering
Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan — sexual relations between men is
punishable by up to five years in prison.
“Most of the time, the reality is extortion and beatings,” said David
Maxey, an immigration counselor with Refugee and Immigration Services
in Roanoke who helped Grigoryan with his case.
Back in America, 20 states have laws prohibiting sodomy, sometimes
referred to as a “crime against nature,” according to the International
Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Of those 20, six states
maintain laws that apply only to homosexual acts: Arkansas, Kansas,
Maryland, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma. In Virginia, consensual sodomy
by either sex is punishable by up to five years in prison.
But being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered should not be a
crime, Singla said, and people should be accepted for who they are
and not persecuted for being themselves.
Last August, an appeals court in California backed that up, ruling
that a transsexual from Mexico who dressed like a woman was entitled
to asylum. Mexico is among the countries where Amnesty International
found evidence of brutality against homosexuals.
“It’s persecution if you’re forced to hide your beliefs,” Singla said.
Grigoryan, who speaks Armenian, Russian, French and English, said
he was happy in his country up until right before he felt forced to
leave. As a doctor in dental surgery with his own office, Grigoryan
said he felt free in every way but one.
“I had a great life in my country,” he said. “I had friends. I had
my own business, but I could never be who I was.”
Arriving in the United States brought its own set of problems,
however. Grigoryan found himself dealing with depression because of
what he had been through and sought the help of a counselor.
Meeting his partner, Richard Justus, helped, too. Grigoryan met him
through a man he knew in Roanoke, who was the reason Grigoryan first
came here.
Singla said depression among gay asylum-seekers is not unusual. For
some, seeking asylum means coming out for the first time.
“It can be a very emotionally overwhelming process,” Singla said. “It’s
not easy at all. For gays and lesbians, it’s so difficult to come
out. They are extremely uncomfortable because of what happened in
their own country. Here, they’re expected to declare their sexual
orientation to lawyers, strangers and authorities.”
And applying for asylum as a homosexual doesn’t mean automatic
approval. Applicants must show documentation that they could face
persecution, which Singla said can often be hard in countries where
the media ignores crimes against homosexuals.
Grigoryan said he’d like to make himself available to others from
Armenia who need someone to help with that information.
In fiscal year 2001, according to INS statistics, about 49,000
people applied for asylum in the United States; about 15,000 received
approval. The day Grigoryan learned he had been recommended for asylum,
he said he was one of only two out of a group of 10 – he didn’t know
their reasons – who got favorable results.
The 400 homosexuals that the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission have documented as getting asylum is actually “just a drop
in bucket,” said Levy, who’s not so sure that the numbers are growing.
Not everyone, however, is pleased that the United States is welcoming
homosexuals.
Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values
Commission, a lobbying group for family values that opposes homosexual
advocacy, said that there was opposition to the 1994 precedent
set by Reno. The fact that gays are getting asylum is the Clinton
administration still at work, she said.
“It’s just another example of using the long arm of the law to
bring about acceptance of homosexuality,” Lafferty said, adding,
“It’s part of this whole agenda – breakdown of the family.”
Lafferty challenged what gays and lesbians were considering
persecution, pointing out that people in America are persecuted
because they say homosexuality is a sin. Christians are persecuted
all over the world, she said.
Still, there aren’t any anti-gay groups lobbying against the asylum
laws at present, Lafferty said. She said it will likely take “some
time” before the Bush administration and Congress address the issue.
“A lot of people believe this is out of control,” she said.
But Grigoryan is not listening to the naysayers.
He’s not even letting a recent attack on him and Justus get him
down. The two men were cursed at and beaten Aug. 1 while they were
getting into their car outside Metropolitan Community Church of
the Blue Ridge. Roanoke police are now calling the attack a hate
crime, although the designation wouldn’t mean a harsher punishment
for the still-free suspects. Sexual orientation isnâ’t included in
Virginiaâ’s hate-crime statute.
Grigoryan just wants to get on with his life, pray that his family
in Armenia won’t be harassed because of him and one day resume his
dentistry career. In five years, he can apply for U.S. citizenship.
“It was important for me,” he said of seeking asylum. “I know that to
be gay, I can be accepted. I’m human. I’m just regular. No one’s
better than me.”
Looking at Justus, his partner of just more than a year, Grigoryan
grinned widely.
“I gave up everything to be with Richard and to be free,” he said
“I have all I need to be happy.”
o Staff researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.
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