Update: Be sure to read the comments from Johnny Simpson, the author of the story on the IRQR, and see his comment I have highlighted here.
Homosexuals are persecuted in Muslim countries and I find it annoying that whenever someone writes about gay refugees and asylees wishing to come to the West, the connection to the intolerance of Islam is never made.
An interview with Arsham Parsi published in The Digital Journal.
Arsham Parsi, a gay Iranian activist, fled Iran for his life in 2005. He settled in Canada in 2006 and founded IRQR [Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees], an NGO that helps LGBTs flee Iran or fight their deportation back to certain death.
In early 2005, Arsham Parsi was engaged in perhaps the most hazardous profession in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Then a 24-year-old native of Shiraz, Iran’s sixth-largest city, Mr. Parsi was working secretly in the city of his birth as a gay activist promoting LGBT rights in the Islamic Republic.
Mr. Parsi says in the interview:
IRQR is working on about 250 Iranian queer asylum cases worldwide at the moment.
[….]
Though IRQR has no paid staff, we have a great success rate. More than 70% of IRQR’s refugee clients have gained asylum status or are in the middle of the resettlement process. IRQR is currently the only progressive Iranian NGO working on behalf of the Iranian LGBT population around the world.