Fifteen years ago Kaweh Beheshtizadeh was a refugee. Now he’s a Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate.

It’s great to see Kaweh Beheshtizadeh as the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Bracknell.

Fifteen years ago Kaweh Beheshtizadeh was a refugee and now he is running for Parliament:

He is, I believe, the first former refugee selected as a Parliament candidate by the Liberal Democrats and has won the Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year award:

I was inspired to study law by the legal aid solicitor who helped me with my asylum case. My solicitor was really good, but I could see that many other asylum seekers were suffering badly without any proper representation…

I was born in a small village in Iranian Kurdistan during the Iran-Iraq war. Some of my earliest childhood memories were of tragic moments such as the bombardment of our area by the Iraqi air forces, seeing the injured people in our village and the people who had fled from the chemical bombardment in Halabja by the Iraqi regime…

In the last 13 years, I have learned that you should never allow your failures to stop you striving for what often seems to be unachievable. If you focus on your goal, if you dream big and if you work hard, you will achieve your goal.

Kaweh Beheshtizadeh’s story is told in the book, The Ungrateful Refugee.