Gay Muslim man loses bid for refugee status in Canada: court

A 24-year-old Albanian Muslim who claims he was beaten and persecuted for being gay has lost his bid for refugee status in Canada.

The Federal Court on Tuesday dismissed Erald Islam’s request for judicial review of the Immigration and Refugee Board’s (IRB) decision.

Court documents detail Islam’s claims of discrimination in his home country.

He said that in 2009 he and a male classmate were verbally and physically abused at their junior high school after fellow students saw them being affectionate. When his father found out about his relationship, he beat him.

Islam said both police and hospital staff mocked him after he and his boyfriend were assaulted and thrown into a river by a gang of five young men.

In 2011, he required medical treatment again after he and his then-boyfriend were attacked by three men, Islam said.

A cousin helped him flee Albania in 2012, and Islam made his way to Canada and applied for status as a “convention refugee” and “a person in need of protection.”

The IRB said Islam’s evidence was vague and his testimony inconsistent, and he had “failed to establish himself as a homosexual person,” court documents say.

Among the evidence Islam had provided were photographs at gay events, receipts from gay bars and affidavits from former colleagues stating that he was gay.

Other photos Islam had provided of him kissing other men were of very poor quality, and the board said it was not possible to identify him in the images.

The board also noted that Islam did not provide evidence from any of the six gay partners he claimed to have had in Canada. Islam said those relationships had been brief, and his English was too poor to request letters of reference from other people he knew in the community or had been at the Pride parade with.

“(Islam) could not be found to have a well-founded fear of persecution, or a foundation for establishing a personal risk to life, or cruel and unusual treatment or punishment, or danger of torture,” the board found in refusing his application last December.

Islam’s lawyer, Jeffrey Goldman, says the board focused on the wrong issues.

“I find that people from repressed societies, where these activities are life-threatening, they have a hard time speaking about these things, and it comes across as though they’re not telling the truth,” Goldman told Yahoo Canada News on Wednesday.

“I think they focused too much on nitpicky stuff instead of the broad question: Is this guy actually gay? In his country, that’s a death sentence,” Goldman said.

It’s unclear what recourse Islam, who lives in Toronto, has left. Goldman said his client will likely be ordered to leave Canada, though there is no timeline for that yet.