Refugees in the world face impossible choices, and Saina Avesta lived through three of them. Fleeing Iran at 18, spending seven years in Turkey with no rights and no safety, then waiting eight years to resettle in Australia, she’s now advocating for other LGBTQIA+ refugees still trapped in processing countries.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses suicide, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you’re not alone. Help is available:
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
When Saina was six, she was forced into a boys’ school in Iran. For 29 years she hid who she was from her family. To escape mandatory military service, she obtained a government card that labelled her mentally disordered, then fled Iran at 18 with nothing.
Turkey offered legal refugee status but not safety. Assigned to a small conservative city with no right to work, no financial support, and no protection, she survived seven years through community self-support, eating alone in restaurant kitchens, unsafe to walk five minutes from home. When her resettlement flight came in 2020, it was cancelled one week before departure due to COVID-19. She waited another year and a half.
In 2021, Saina arrived in Australia as a citizen. Now she runs the Persian Queer Network, supporting LGBTQIA+ refugees still in processing countries across Turkey, Armenia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Pakistan. She consults with organisations on the intersection of refugee background and queer identity, and represented displaced LGBTQIA+ people at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva.
This episode is for anyone who has felt trapped between two impossible choices, or who is searching for proof that the waiting, the danger, and the limbo can end. Saina names what most services miss: the intersectionality of being both refugee and queer means existing support systems fail you twice.
🕒 CHAPTERS:
00:00 The school where girls didn’t go
02:20 Iran’s unspoken rule for trans people
05:05 29 years before she could tell her family
12:28 Forced transition or arrest
18:10 Forced to Turkey, no alternative
29:30 Unsafe from day one in Turkey
36:44 Refugee status in a conservative city
40:40 Eight years of delays and one cancelled flight
43:14 Landing in Australia as a citizen
48:17 Speaking at the UN for people still trapped
57:32 Being the voice for those still trapped
59:50 What refugee services get wrong about LGBTQIA+ people
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