Privacy policy

When Queer Habibi arrived in Australia five years ago, he couldn’t imagine the life he has now.

He’d arrived in Sydney very much in the closet hoping just to improve his English skills.

A pivotal point came for him when he attended Mardi Gras as a spectator.

“I went to the Mardi Gras parade in 2020, still pretending to be a straight man,” he said. “I saw that gay people have freedom and I thought it was beautiful living with human rights. Slowly I came out as a gay man at the age of 36. For my entire life before then I had always lived in the closet.”

Queer Habibi is from a conservative Muslim family and when his original visa expiration was coming up, he thought he would have to return to his home nation in South-East Asia.

However, a chance encounter saw him discover the services of Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS) and that he was eligible for a protection visa.

“I went to say goodbye to my friend and he told me about RACS and that I may be able to stay in Australia,” Queer Habibi explains.

RACS is a nonprofit providing essential legal support to people who have fled persecution to find certainty and safety in Australia.

“In that difficult situation, RACS helped me a lot,” Queer Habibi explains.

“They interviewed me over the phone, wrote down my history and then RACS helped me with my case.”

This is an excerpt “Queer Habibi: Free and Fierce”, written by Dale Roberts for QNews. Read the full article in the latest QNews magazine issue here.