Pride Winnipeg | 2014

pride Winnipeg | Supplement to the winnipeg free press

May 21, 2014

Pride Parade Grand Marshal

By Holli Moncrieff P ride Winnipeg’s 2014 Pride Parade Grand Marshal is grateful to be alive. Hamed was forced to flee his home in Iran four years ago to avoid being executed. His crime? Hamed is gay, and in Iran, being gay is a death sentence. “When I left Iran, I had no idea what was in my future. I had no plan,” says Hamed, who prefers not to use his last name in order to protect his family back in Iran. “There is an unbelievable amount of hatred towards homosexuals there.” Hamed, 29, made his way to Tehran and eventu- ally to Turkey, where he managed to scrape by for 17 months while he waited for his refugee status and move to Canada to be approved. The United Nations in Turkey put Hamed in touch with a group of men in Winnipeg who wanted to sponsor a refugee. Known as the Group of Five, the men are connected to the lo- cal Rainbow Resource Centre. “Refugees aren’t allowed to work in Turkey, so I ran out of money and was in a horrible situation,” Hamed recalls. “I was just making my life harder than before, living in a foreign country with no money.” Mark Rabnett and his partner Horst Backe were Hamed’s main contacts from the Group of Five. The three men spoke several times a week on Skype for almost a year, and when Hamed finally arrived in Winnipeg, Rabnett and Backe gave him a home. “We knew there were a lot of Iranian refugees in Turkey, and that these refugees were in a

state of dire need. Their plight is very real—gay people are being executed in horrific ways in Iran,” says Rabnett. “This is a serious problem that is not going to go away.” While Hamed always knew he was different, he didn’t realize he was gay until he was 20 years old. His problems began when his boyfriend of five years decided he could no longer live a lie. Hamed will ride in the lead car during the Parade and have the chapce to tell his story. “It was difficult to lie to our families, our cowork- ers, our friends. Lies get confused in your mind and become this big heavy thing on your shoul- ders,” Hamed says. “My boyfriend decided to tell his family that he’s gay to make himself feel better. And that was the start of a fight between his family and me—they thought I was the cause of him being gay.” Faced with constant pressure from his boy- friend’s family, who threatened to tell Hamed’s mother and his boss, Hamed felt he had no other choice but to leave Iran. “It’s not just me. If they killed me and that was the end of the story, I wouldn’t have been so

worried, but there would have been very bad re- percussions for my family,” he says. “They would have had a label on their foreheads. Every time someone in my family tried to get a job or get married, it would come up. ‘What have you done wrong that you have a gay son?’” Ryan Zacharias, Pride/Rally Director, says that Hamed embodies the spirit of this year’s theme ,Without Borders. “We’re shining a light on an issue that’s not as prevalent in Manitoba. It’s about overcoming adversity because of your country’s laws—look what’s happening in Russia right now,” Zacharias says. “It’s more common than people think.” As Grand Marshal, Hamed will ride in the lead car during the Parade and have the chance to tell his story. “All my life, I’ve been trying to hide my sexuality and pretend I’m something different, and now I’m talking to newspapers and in a parade,” Hamed laughs. “Living here has been a really great experience. I feel like I’ve been here forever.” After two years in Winnipeg, Hamed has his own apartment, a full-time job as a homecare support worker, and a few friends, but he’d love to meet more people in the LGBTTQ* commun- ity. Aside from his younger sister, his family still doesn’t know that he’s gay. “All my life I’ve been lying to my family, my coworkers, and my friends, and I love these people. Even when I’m talking to my family, I am trying to lie a little less,” he says. “My mother may know I’m different, but that doesn’t mean she wants to put a label on it.”

Hamed, an Iranian refugee, embodies the spirit of this year’s Pride Winnipeg ‘Without Borders’ theme.

Horst Backe, left, and Mark Rabnett, right, sponsored Hamed and helped him settled into life in Canada.

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