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A Nicaraguan man facing deportation next week says the Immigration and Refugee Board denied him asylum in Canada because they didn't believe he's gay.
A Nicaraguan man facing deportation next week says the Immigration and Refugee Board denied him asylum in Canada because they didn't believe he's gay. Alvaro Orozco, who has lived in Toronto for two years, based his refugee claim on fears of returning to his home country where sodomy is illegal. He says his family beat him because of his sexual orientation. "My father told me, 'If one of my sons became gay one day, I will kill him with my hands,'" said Orozco. "I was so scared. And that is why I escaped." Orozco, now 21, ran away from home at age 12, hitchhiked across Central America and Mexico, and then swam across the Rio Grande into the United States, where he was arrested and put into a detention centre for a year. When he was released on a promise to return to Nicaragua, he fled again, this time to a church. He made his way to Canada in 2005. Source: cbc.ca |
