When 32-year-old Rahma Esslouani landed at Toronto Pearson Airport in July 2024, she unlocked an overwhelming sense of safety and freedom that she hadn’t felt in more than a decade.
Since her early 20s, Esslouani says she has faced relentless violence and persecution due to her gender and sexual identity, but with the help of a local charity, she was able to seek asylum in Canada and escape the abuse.
“It was very hard for me to survive in Morocco,” Esslouani said in an interview with CityNews. “I always felt more attracted to women, and I don’t like to wear traditional clothes. I always wanted to wear clothes that I feel comfortable in.”
“I wanted to be myself,” she added. “Because of this, I was always facing violence in school and bullying at my job.”
Esslouani worked as a receptionist at a hotel where she says she was constantly badgered by her coworkers about her short hair and masculine-presenting clothes. Her colleagues would frequently introduce her to new men and pressure her to go on dates with them.
Outside of work, her home life was even more soul-crushing. In 2019, she says her family attempted to force her into marrying a man.
“They just set up everything and said in one month you are getting married,” Esslouani explained. “I was in shock because I couldn’t imagine this would happen to me.”
When she objected to the marriage, Esslouani says she faced violence from her brother and was locked in a room in her family’s home for three days.
Her mother and sister also condemned her, saying she would bring shame to the family. That’s when Esslouani decided to hatch a plan to escape the country before the forced marriage could take place.
She got on the phone with a friend who booked her a flight to Türkiye within days.
During her first few weeks in the country, Esslouani said she felt a major reprieve from her chaotic homelife, but that initial comfort quickly began to dissipate.
“Türkiye was horrible. It’s worse than I thought. There was so much discrimination and violence that was homophobic,” she explained. “It was very hard for me to go outside.”
“One day, I was walking home from the beach and these two men started walking towards me, one from the left side and one from the right side, and they asked me, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’”
According to Esslouani, one of the men then proceeded to grab her breasts.
“I pushed him back, and he slapped me,” she explained. “Then they both started to violently beat me in the street.”
Esslouani says this was the first of two such attacks that happened during her time in Türkiye. A few months later, she was dealt another devastating blow.
“I was walking onto the subway and the train operator arrested me just because of my behaviour,” she explained. “He took my passport and said, ‘Come with me to the station. I want to ask you some questions.’”
“When I went into the station, no one talked to me. They just put me in a cell in the basement, where I spent one night. The next day, they took me to a deportation centre and cancelled my refugee card.”
“I had no idea what was happening. I didn’t have my phone. They took everything,” she added. “I was just trying to stay positive.”
After a few days, Esslouani was released, and she immediately began reaching out to various LGBTQ+ organizations for help.
“I tried to contact so many organizations, but they all told me that they could not help me,” she explained.
Eventually, she came across a Canadian charity called Rainbow Railroad, which helps queer and transgender people around the world who are experiencing persecution in their home countries.
“I contacted Rainbow Railroad, and after just one day, they sent me an email and said, ‘We are here with you. You are not alone.’”
“It meant a lot to me, because I was so hopeless and everything was so dark,” she added.
With the help of Rainbow Railroad, Esslouani was able to file an asylum claim and immigrate to Toronto in July 2024.
According to the organization’s annual report, which was released on Friday, Esslouani is just one of 5,916 individuals who were supported by the charity in the last year.
“We’re seeing a pretty terrifying backsliding as it relates to LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms,” Devon Matthews, the head of programs at Rainbow Railroad, told CityNews. “We’re seeing a significant shift not just in outright violence, but also in relation to withholding access to medical care, education, and legal representation.”
“We are very grateful that the Canadian government has been supportive of our government-assisted refugee pathway, which is a completely novel and unique pathway. Canada is the only government in the world that has granted direct refugee referral access to a queer organization,” they added.
“We fought long and hard for that for probably around six years to prove the point that queer and trans people require specific care and support through the refugee and asylum-seeking process.”
From 2020 to 2024, Rainbow Railroad says it increased support for queer and transgender people in need of help by 1,000 per cent.
As the Canadian government looks to crack down on the number of newcomers entering the country, Matthews wants the Liberals to reaffirm their commitment to queer and transgender asylum seekers.
“They are really putting people in risky situations who are trying to build their lives and seek safety in Canada,” she explained. “Canada should want to continue its commitment and its long legacy and history of being a country that was welcoming of newcomers, especially those who are running from persecution and human rights violations.”
For Esslouani, the opportunity to come to Canada has been life-saving.
“Because of Rainbow Railroad, I am still alive,” she explained. “Now that I’m in Canada, I can wear whatever I want here, and no one cares. I can hold my partner’s hand and walk in the street without being afraid that someone will hurt me.”
Later this week, she will be attending her first-ever Pride event with her new partner, whom she met in Toronto.
She says it feels like a winning moment after years of persecution.
“It feels like my victory after everything I went through over the years.”
