The coming UK election and LGBT asylum

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By Paul Canning

The leader of Britain's opposition Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, has restated his party's support for change in the UK's attitude to LGBT asylum seekers.

From an interview with The Independent:

On asylum seekers – an issue which is notoriously unpopular with the electorate – Mr Clegg was equally bullish, describing Britain’s asylum system as “the most inhumane, irrational, cruel systems imaginable”.

“It’s a moral stain on our collective consciousnesses,” he said. “The public debate has transformed asylum seekers into threats rather than human beings.”

He said Lib Dem policy would be that Britain should provide sanctuary to those fleeing persecution because of their sexual orientation: “It’s not just me that says this, it’s international law that says it.”

A party statement released alongside the interview summerised their policy as:

Guarantee any refugees genuinely fleeing a country because of persecution over their sexual orientation asylum in the UK.

Clegg has previously spoken out against "the astonishing brutality and cruelty that has become a part of our asylum system". The party passed a resolution 'Government must stop sending gay and lesbian people to their deaths' at its 2008 conference.

Apart from the LibDems, the UK Green party has good policy and has actively worked on the issue through their MEPs.

A general election in expected in the UK in May. Current polls suggest a possible hung parliament which may put the LibDems in a position to influence and achieve much needed changes in LGBT asylum policy and practice.

The UK Labour government has consistently denied its discriminatory treatment of LGBT asylum seekers — despite the numerous appalling cases documented on this website which led the widely respected NGO Human Rights Watch in 2008 to name the Home Office to its 'Hall of Shame'. Time and again only support from activists and campaigning has saved people against a government wanting to throw them back to the wolves.

Among the LGBT asylum cases — all refused asylum by the government and only won after a long legal fight by the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration group (UKGLIG), Outrage, Iraqi LGBT, the Lesbian Community Project in Manchester and others including local communities, refugee groups and churches — are:

• Ugandans Prozzy Kazooma, who was marched for two miles naked through the streets, jailed, raped and tortured by police, Kizza Musinguzi, who was jailed for gay human rights work and subjected to four months of forced labour, water torture, beatings and rape, and John Bosco who was violently deported despite being personally targeted, with photos, by a homophobic Ugandan tabloid (Bosco was returned to the UK after a damning judicial decision and, despite Home Office efforts, subsequently given leave to remain). Another Ugandan was told by a judge in 2006 that women 'cannot be understood to be homosexual’.
• A Jamaican lesbian, who was told to go back to her homeland because she would be in no danger as she was over 40 and therefore no longer sexually attractive.
• Iraqi asylum seekers, still being told they can safely return to a country well documented to have active anti-LGBT death squads who kill gay men by filling their anuses with glue. 
• Iranians Pegah Emambakhsh, whose partner was arrested, tortured and subsequently sentenced to death by stoning, and Mehdi Kazemi whose partner was also executed. 
• An Algerian gay man who had been jailed for homosexuality. In prison, he was raped, beaten by inmates and guards and had his teeth knocked out.
  

Many others cases have been lost with people sent back to such violently homophobic countries as Cameroon and Nigeria - where a police warrant on charges of homosexuality and a solicitor's letter stating that he was likely to be sentenced to death by stoning wasn't enough to stop one gay man's deportation.

This record is news to the Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, according to his statements in an interview this month with Johann Hari for Attitude Magazine:

[Q] Speaking of violence against gay people - there are some refugees fleeing countries where gay people are imprisoned or killed who make it to Britain, and they seem to face a contradictory policy. Some who are given the right to remain, but others are told to go back to their home country, hide their sexuality, and hope for the best. Do you think that’s acceptable?

[A] Asylum law is incredibly difficult, and you can’t ever have a blanket inclusion or exclusion. Every asylum case is going to be dealt with on its merits. I don’t think any party will give you an absolutist commitment on this question. But obviously, our whole party has been built on the idea that where there is persecution, we’ve got to be prepared to help them.

[Q] So your view is, if someone is from a country where they will be killed for being gay, and they make it to Britain, they’ve got a right to stay?

[A] What I’m saying is that every case is treated as an individual case. And the people who come to this country who are able to show that they are seeking asylum because the persecution that they’ve suffered is a risk to their life… that is something that we as a nation have traditionally accepted.

Notably, Brown didn't respond to Haari's question on the government's policy of expecting LGBT asylum seekers to go back to the country where they are fleeing from and 'be discreet' about their sexuality.

Last year Phil Woolas, Minister of State for borders and immigration, defended the 'be discreet' policy in an astonishing article promoting the presence of LGBT asylum seekers on the London Pride March as a Labour 'success story'. He said:

The Court of Appeal has found, in line with our policy that whether a gay claimant can reasonably be expected to tolerate behaving discreetly is something that must be considered on the individual merits of the case.

In a carefully worded response to this statement the UKGLIG said that this policy was plainly discriminatory:

Phil Woolas claims that “a degree of discretion can be required in all sexual relationships, heterosexual as well as homosexual”, which implies that the measure of discretion required would be applied equally. This is clearly not the case and in practice LGBT persons would be forced to have to live a lie.

Moreover, this reference to discretion does not reflect the realities of most LGBT asylum claims: applicants simply want a life in which they can be who they are and/or have a relationship with their partner, without fearing death, violence, rape, prosecution, forced marriage or losing their livelihood or homes. Their claims are not about seeking the right to commit ‘public indecencies’. However, within the legal, social, cultural or religious framework in many of their home countries, an (open or secret) LGBT identity or same sex relationship is often, in and of itself, considered ‘indecent’.

Kerry Maskell, Project Coordinator of the Lesbian Community Project in Manchester says:

We see people who have just arrived. They come in scared and quiet, afraid to talk to others or about themselves. We see them gain confidence and become vibrant wonderful people. Why would anyone want to take that away from them and put them back to being the people they were when they arrived?

A female asylum seeker from Saudi Arabia who Maskell has recently worked with has been told to go home and be discreet. She fled the country when her sister, who was also gay, disappeared from a safe house in her own country. She does not know what happened to her sister, only that she is dead.

Our group member fled the country with her two sons, who are not aware of her sexuality. She does not want to tell her sons or fully ‘come out’ until she knows that she can stay in the country as she fears, if people find out, she will be killed if she is sent home. She was told in court that, as she is not out in this country, she may as well go back to her own country and not be out there! She did win her case but the Home Office appealed against it and she now has to go through the whole process again.

Minister Woolas' attitude to people like Maskell defending LGBT asylum seekers was stated in a 2008 interview where he derided a "vested interest" of 'NGOs and migration lawyers giving false hope and undermining the legal system'.

More evidence that Woolas is operating a discriminatory and homophobic regime was in a report published last year which found that lesbian asylum seekers are not being protected by the UK Border Agency and their particular problems go unrecognised. Discrimination, abuse, harassment and violence, including rape, against them was common to the experience related by the women interviewed. They told of violence against them by people employed by the Government.

Last year UKLGIG said that:

Transmen are being detained in Yarl’s Wood – a female-only detention centre, gay men are forced to live with other detainees from their country of origin who often hold the same the homophobic views as the society they are escaping from.

Continuous allegations of physical assault and racial abuse by guards forced former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last year to ask Nuala O'Loan, the former Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland, to conduct an investigation. But there has been no action by Labour on reports of the homophobic mistreatment of LGBT asylum seekers.

LGBT asylum activist Peter Tatchell has helped numerous people and has extensive experience of what he calls 'Britain's homophobic asylum system'. He, more than anyone, knows how Labour has reneged on what few pledges have been squeezed out of it on LGBT asylum.

At the London LGBT Pride Rally in 2008 Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman was booed due to the government's treatment of Mehdi Kazemi.

Kazemi is a gay Iranian teenager who the Home Office wanted removed despite his young boyfriend having been executed. Kazemi was only saved from a similar fate because of an international campaign leading to the conservative Dutch government (which operates a humane LGBT asylum policy) extracting concessions from then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith - Kazemi had fled the UK for the Netherlands.

Questioned after Kazemi eventually won 'leave to remain', Smith refused requests for a moratorium on the return of LGBT asylum seekers to Iran, claiming:

The evidence does not show a real risk of discovery of, or adverse action against, gay and lesbian people who are discreet about their sexual orientation.

Since 2000 at least two Iranian gay asylum seekers have committed suicide rather than be returned.

29-year old Israfil Shiri, who had fled Iran when the authorities there discovered he was gay, was one. He walked into the offices of Refugee Action in Manchester, doused himself in petrol and burned himself alive.

Says Peter Tatchell:

At his asylum hearing, the adjudicator turned down his application, citing ‘lack of evidence.’ Unable to find a lawyer willing to represent him, or to produce expert evidence on the persecution of gay people in Iran, he also lost his appeal. 

Within days, the National Asylum Support Service ordered his eviction from the asylum hostel where he had been housed, turning him out in the street. Simultaneously, the government cut off his benefits. Banned from working, Shiri ended up homeless and destitute. Like many other asylum-seekers, he was forced to sleep on the streets and scrounge discarded food from rubbish bins. 

His health rapidly deteriorated. But having no address, he could not register with a GP to get treatment. 

The government has Shiri’s blood on its hands. It is enforcing an inhuman asylum system. The Home Office bears a large degree of responsibility for the suicide of this young gay man. It treated Shiri as a criminal, when in reality he was the victim of criminal abuse and neglect – both in Iran and in the UK.

As she stepped down from the London Pride stage after being booed, Tachell spoke with Harman. At a subsequent meeting with Harman and Minister Barbara Follett a "mechanism whereby [Tatchell] could report abuses and [they] would take action to put them right" was agreed. However this agreement fell apart at its first test when the two Ministers committed what Tatchell describes as "a betrayal of the trust and commitment that I thought we had established" by refusing to make any representations in the case of the deported gay Azerbaijani asylum seeker Babi Badalov.

As often happens, Badalov was called in to a meeting, seized and quickly put on a plane. He couldn't even pack a bag so was left on arrival in the Azerbaijani capital Baku with just the clothes he was wearing. Once there he was forced into hiding with fellow artists (he has been exhibited in several countries) due to 'honour' threats of death from family members. His sister had warned him over the phone never to come to the country again.

He said:

I can’t tell you how horrible it is. If I die and there’s a funeral, nobody will come: the mullah won’t come, nobody will read the Koran. [The body of a gay man] is a dirty, foul body. It cannot be touched; it cannot be washed. It must be thrown into a pit, because it’s so shameful. This attitude still exists there.

When he was being put onto the plane Badalov reported being told by a Border Agent, "you make us sick, you're going back where you belong.” He is now in Paris after fleeing first to St Petersberg.

Tatchell is not the only one who has tried to lobby Labour.

UKLGIG say that they have been asking for years for an LGBT Asylum Policy Instruction (API) which is used to guide UK Border Agency (UKBA) staff. Apart from sole case where asylum has been quickly granted, the Nigerian gay Christian leader Davis Mac-Iyalla, the one and only breakthrough which this author is aware of is that the UKBA have invited UKLGIG to make presentations to case workers on LGBT asylum issues. However the charity puts this in context:

We are very pleased the UKBA have taken this step, but more in-depth training is very much needed and we are discussing this with the UKBA at the moment. In order to achieve fair decision making, caseworkers would require detailed knowledge and understanding of not only LGBT asylum issues, but of these issues in very specific cultural contexts.

One major reason that this 'understanding' hasn't been happening is because of what UKLGIG describe as the "quality and quantity of information on LGBT issues within the country of origin information (COI) prepared and used by the UKBA in their decision making". This despite a 2006 commitment wrung from the Home Office that UKLGIG would have input directly into the process of information gathering as it relates to human rights abuses of sexual minorities globally. And again, following a 2008 independent review of COI which told UKBA what they should have already realised, rather than right this wrong themselves from their own vast resources, they looked instead to the small, under-resourced charity UKLGIG for help.

The debacle with Harman and Tatchell as well as the extensive concerns most prominently featured in the press by the Mehdi Kazemi case led the party's LGBT activist organisation, LGBT Labour, to pass a resolution at its AGM last year which highlighted problems they saw with the government's policy and practice. They proposed:

• That LGBT people should not be asked to prove their sexuality and that the Home Office and Borders and Immigration Agency respect the right of individuals to self define as LGBT.
• That the Borders and Immigration Agency employ specialist LGBT “case owners” who have received specific training in handling LGBT asylum cases.
• That the UK Government should not return people on the pretext that they will have to “hide” their sexuality on return to their home country.

As well as Labour LGBT, some Labour politicians have also expresssed concerns (though this has not included any of the party's prominent gay or lesbian MPs), which has undoubtedly helped specific cases. One Labour candidate has called for 'A fair deal for gay asylum seekers'. Yet in policy and practice terms almost nothing has changed for the better for LGBT refugees — and, as those working with LGBT refugees testify, much has changed for the worse.

Despite PM Brown's claims, case after case has demonstrated Labour's indifference on the issue of LGBT refugees. Woolas and Smith's statements on the 'discretion' policy shows that discrimination lies at the heart of that indifference. The lack of any action on advice from the likes of UKGLIG shows a consistent failure of leadership on LGBT equality in the Home Office.

Although some opposition Conservative politicians have shown support for individual cases, this website is unaware of any statement or answer to a journalist's question from the Conservative leadership suggesting that they will review current Home Office/UK Border Agency policy and practice on LGBT asylum.

[UPDATE: Cameron opposes 'be discrete' gay asylum policy?]


With only a few months to go before the election campaign, unless Labour can somehow do better than PM Brown's ignorant and bland statement "our whole party has been built on the idea that where there is persecution, we’ve got to be prepared to help", there is no reason to think that a Conservative government would do any worse.

For anyone concerned that the UK should and can do much better at providing sanctuary for LGBT fleeing persecution, execution and torture, on their policy, actions and in order to influence some real change this website's recommendation is vote Green or LibDem.

Peter Tatchell: The global struggle for queer freedom

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By Peter Tatchell

Caroline Benn Memorial Lecture 2009

Delivered 13 October 2009 at Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln, UK.

It is a very great honour, and joy, to deliver the Caroline Benn Memorial Lecture 2009. Caroline was a friend and comrade. I remember her with much affection. She left us with a fine humanitarian legacy as a leading advocate of comprehensive education and better educational opportunities. She also lives on, in spirit, through her inspiring, passionate support for socialism, trade union rights, women’s equality and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) freedom. She was a true progressive, who dedicated her life, with much honour and nobility, to the upliftment of humanity. I am very proud to have known Caroline, and salute her life and work with this lecture.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have made great progress in Britain, especially in the last decade. But in large parts of the world, homophobic and transphobic oppression remains rife.

Take Jamaica, a country with which Britain has close ties. It is a parliamentary democracy and a member of the Commonwealth. It is not a police-state dictatorship. Yet male homosexuality is criminalised and punishable with up to 10 years hard labour. Homophobic discrimination and violence is endemic and the government refuses to take any serious action to protect LGBT Jamaicans.

One of my Jamaican colleagues was the AIDS educator and gay rights activist, Steve Harvey. He was a trail-blazer for LGBT people and especially for people with HIV. In late 2005, a gang burst into his home, kidnapped him, took him to a remote place and shot him dead in an execution-style killing.

Soon afterwards, Nokia Cowen drowned when he jumped into Kingston harbour to escape a violent homophobic mob that had chased him through town. A few weeks later, Jamaica’s trade ambassador, Peter King, was found dead with his throat slashed and multiple stab wounds. Then there was the gruesome discovery of the mutilated bodies of two lesbians, who were found dumped in a septic pit behind the house they shared. All these horrific, homophobic killings happened just weeks apart.

Only this summer, John Terry, the British consul in Jamaica, was brutally mudered in his own home by a killer who left a note abusing him as a “batty man” (Jamaican patois slang for faggot), and warning that the same fate would happen to “all gays.”

Homophobic violence is routine in Jamaica, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. LGBT victims of hate crimes seldom get justice. Police sometimes ignore anti-gay attacks and some officers have been known to abuse, threaten, beat and arrest gay-bashing victims. The perpetrators of homophobic violence are rarely put on trial and convicted.

What is happening in Jamaica is symptomatic of a much wider homophobic persecution.

Around 80 countries continue to outlaw homosexuality, with penalties ranging from one year’s jail to life imprisonment. Just under half these countries are former British colonies and current members of the Commonwealth – a community of nations supposedly committed to uphold democracy and human rights. The anti-gay laws in these Commonwealth nations were originally legislated by the British government in the nineteenth century during the period of colonial rule. They were never repealed when these nations won their independence from Britain.

As well as homophobic laws, British imperalism imposed homophobic prejudice, by means of the fire and brimstone Christian fundamentalist missionaries who sought to “civilise” the so-called “heathen” peoples of the colonies. Some civilisation! The British conquerers instilled in these countries a homophobic hatred that lives on to this day, which is wrecking the lives of LGBT people.

Homophobia is particularly extreme in the Islamist states that impose the death penalty for same-sex relations, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Sudan and the Yemen. In some regions of other countries, such as Nigeria and Pakistan, Sharia law is enforced and lesbians and gays can be stoned to death.

Amid this gloom, last December something truly remarkable and historic happened. Sixty-six countries signed a United Nations’ statement calling for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and condemning homophobic discrimination and violence. This was the first time the UN General Assembly had addressed the issue of LGBT human rights. Previously, all resolutions that attempted to get UN committees to endorse LGBT equality had been blocked by an unholy alliance of the Vatican and Islamic states.

Despite this breakthrough statement, even today no international human rights convention specifically acknowledges sexual rights as human rights. None explicitly guarantee equality and non-discrimination to LGBT people. The right to love a person of one’s choice is absent from global humanitatrian statutes. Relationships between partners of the same sex are not officially recognised in any international law. There is nothing in the many UN conventions that concretely guarantees LGBT equality and prohibits homophobic discrimination

Nor are specific LGBT rights and protections included within the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It is only in the last decade or so that the ECHR’s equality and privacy clauses been interpreted to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

In the late 1990s, British LGBT citizens filed appeals at the European Court of Human Rights, against the UK’s then discriminatory, homophobic laws. They cited the ECHR’s right-to-privacy and anti-discrimination clauses to successfully challenge centuries-old anti-gay UK legislation. These victories at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg forced the British government to repeal the unequal age of consent for gay men, discriminatory sexual offences laws and the ban on lesbians and gays serving in the armed forces.

ECHR judgments also successfully pressured Romania and Cyprus to decriminalise homosexuality. The ECHR has thus played an important role in challenging and overturning homophobic legislation.

Of the 192 member states of the UN, only a handful have repealed all major legal inequalities against LGBT people: including the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Canada, New Zealand and, more recently, the UK.

Britain’s record was not always so positive. In the 1980s, the UK had a greater number of homophobic laws than the then communist-ruled Soviet Union. Nowadays, we are one of the most progressive European countries. We’ve gone from zero to hero in a mere decade.

In large parts of the world, however, homophobia is still rampant. Hundreds of millions of LGBT people are forced to hide their sexuality; fearing ostracism, harassment, discrimination, imprisonment, torture and even murder.

Some of this violence is perpetrated by vigilantes, including right-wing death squads in countries like Mexico and Brazil. They justify the killing of queers as “social cleansing.”
Other homophobic persecution is officially encouraged and enforced by governments, police, courts, media and religious leaders.

This persecution is happening even in Europe and the US. In echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s notorious Section 28, Lithuania has just passed a new law banning the so-called “promotion” of homosexuality. The US maintains a federal ban on same-sex marriage and openly LGBT people are not allowed to serve in the armed forces.

Homophobic injustice is rife in much of Africa. Cameroonian gay men have been arrested and jailed in the last year, without any clear evidence that they had same-sex relations.

In Nigeria, in 2005, six teenage lesbians, one only 12 years old, were ordered to be punished with an agonising 90 lashes for consensual same-sex relations. Last year, a Nigerian gay pastor and another Christian gay activist were forced to flee the country after threats to kill them.

In Nepal, there is a long, sad history of transgender people being regularly beaten, raped, arrested and detained without trial.

Government ministers in Namibia, echoing the homo-hatred of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, have denounced lesbians and gays as unAfrican, as traitors and as spreaders of HIV/AIDS.

In the new post-Saddam Hussein “democratic” Iraq, the rise of Islamist fundamentalism has led to the creeping, de facto imposition of Sharia law, with deadly consequences for LGBTs – and for women who refuse to be veiled. Iraqis who murder LGBT people to defend the “honour” of their family escape punishment. The US and UK-backed Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has issued a fatwa calling for the execution of lesbians and gays in the “worst, most severe way possible.” Islamist death squads of the Badr and Sadr militias are assassinating LGBT people in their homes and streets, with impunity.

Russian religious leaders have united to orchestrate a campaign of hatred against the LGBT community. The Orthodox Church has denounced homosexuality as a “sin which destroys human beings and condemns them to a spiritual death.” The Chief Mufti of Russia’s Muslims, Talgat Tajuddin, says gay campaigners “should be bashed… Sexual minorities have no rights, because they have crossed the line. Alternative sexuality is a crime against God.” Russian Chief Rabbi, Berl Lazar, has condemned gay pride parades as “a blow for morality,” adding that there is no right to “sexual perversions.”

The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, has denounced gay people as “satanic.” He has repeatedly banned Gay Pride marches. This violates Russia’s constitution and law, which guarantee freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest. LGBT people who have attempted to march have been violently arrested.

The Iranian persecution of LGBTs continues unabated. Twenty-two year old Amir was entrapped by via a gay dating website. The person he arranged to meet turned out to be a member of the morality police. Amir was jailed, tortured and sentenced to 100 lashes, which caused him to lose consciousness and left his whole back covered in huge bloody welts. He is just one of many Iranian LGBTs who have been subjected to lashings, torture, imprisonment and, sometimes, execution.

The western-backed regime in Saudi Arabia retains the death penalty – usually beheading – for homosexuality. In early 2006, its neighbour, the United Arab Emirates, imposed six years jail on 11 gay men arrested at a private party. They were not imprisoned for sexual acts, but merely for being gay and attending a gay social gathering.

The election of a right-wing, Catholic fundamentalist government in Poland in 2005 resulted in the abolition of the government office for combating discrimination against women and LGBTs. The same year, the Mayor of Poznan banned the Gay Pride parade. LGBT people marched anyway. Over 60 were arrested. Many more were injured after the police failed to protect them from the violence of far right counter-protesters.

Uganda is gripped by the state-sponsored victimisation of LGBT people. Typical is the fate of gay rights activist Kizza Musinguzi. He was jailed in 2004 and subjected to four months of forced labour, water torture, beatings and rape. Another gay Ugandan, Isaac K, narrowly escaped an attempted summary execution by a homophobic mob acting with the connivance of local government officials.

Those who speak out against anti-gay violence risk dire consequences. Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo was dismissed by the Church of Uganda for defending the human rights of LGBT people.

In recent years, the Ugandan government has passed a law banning same-sex marriage, fined Radio Simba for broadcasting a discussion of LGBT issues, and expelled a UN AIDS agency director for meeting with gay activists.

LGBT people have nevertheless made huge strides forward in many parts of the world. A mere four decades ago, “queers” were almost universally seen as mad, bad and sad. Same-sex relations were deemed a sin, a crime and a sickness. It was in only 1991 that the World Health Organisation declassified homosexuality as an illness, and that Amnesty International agreed to campaign for LGBT human rights and to adopt jailed LGBTs as prisoners of conscience.

Nowadays, the global tide is shifting in favour of LGBT emanicipation. An out gay man and LGBT activist, Sunil Pant, was elected to the parliament of Nepal in the post-monarchy elections. In 1999, Georgina Beyer took office in New Zealand, becoming the world’s first openly transgender MP. Uruguay, formerly a military dictatorship, this summer lifted its prohibition on gay servicemen and women. The Lebanon has made history by becoming the first Arab Middle East nation to allow the open, legal establishment of an LGBT welfare and human rights group, Helem.

While fundamentalist religion is still a major threat to LGBT equality, we also have our allies in many faiths. The anti-aparheid hero, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has compared homophobia to racism, and described the battle for LGBT freedom as the moral equivalent of the fight against apartheid.

Six countries now outlaw sexual orientation discrimination in their constitutions: South Africa (1996), Fiji (1997), Ecuador (1998), Switzerland (2000), Sweden (2003) and Portugal (2004).

In almost every country on earth, there are LGBT freedom movements – some open, others clandestine.

For the first time ever, countries like the Philippines, Estonia, Lebanon, Columbia, Russia, Sri Lanka, and China are hosting LGBT conferences and Pride celebrations. Via the internet and pop culture, LGBT people in small towns in Ghana, Peru, Uzbekistan, Kuwait, Vietnam, St Lucia, Palestine, Fiji and Kenya are connecting with the worldwide LGBT community. The struggle for LGBT liberation has gone global. We’ve begun to roll back the homophobia of centuries. Bravo!

Postscript:

LGBT movements worldwide are urging every government to legislate LGBT equality and human rights and to tackle homophobic and transphobic prejudice, harassment, discriminatiion and violence. These demands include:

1 – Decriminalise same-sex relations; in particular, abolish the death penalty and flogging.

2 – Allow the formation of LGBT organisations and the advocacy of LGBT human rights; and consult with these organisations and their spokespeople when drafting new laws and policies.

3 – Outlaw discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity, in employment, housing, education, advertising, health-care and the provision of goods and services, such as hotel accommodation and service in bars and restaurants.

4 – Establish an equal age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual acts.

5 – Grant legal recognition and rights to same-sex partners; either via civil marriage or civil partnerships / civil unions.

6 – Teach gay-inclusive sex and civic education in schools, in order to challenge homophobia and promote understanding and acceptance of LGBT people.

7 – Crackdown on homophobic hate crimes, to protect LGBTs from hate-motivated violence.

8 – Revise all laws to make them sexuality-neutral, so there is no legislative differentiation between heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality, and so that heterosexual, lesbian, gay and bisexual people have the same rights and responsibilities in law.

9 – Provide access for same-sex couples to fertility treatment and give them the right to foster and adopt children.

10 – Offer gay-inclusive HIV education and prevention campaigns, non-discriminatory HIV care and support services, and LGBT access to free or low-cost condoms.

Onward, upward and forward to queer liberation worldwide.

* Peter Tatchell has campaigned for LGBT human rights for over 40 years. For more information about his campaigns and to make a donation: www.petertatchell.net

Ugandan asylum seeker wins Sappho prize

Source: PinkNews.co.uk

The editor of a website that documents the violence and intimidation suffered by the gay community in Uganda has won a prestigious prize.

The Sappho in Paradise Book Prize is conferred annually by the International Lesbian and Gay Cultural Network (ILGCN), a worldwide voluntary association of lesbian and gay cultural workers.

Kizza Musinguzi, editor of gayrightsuganda.org, and an asylum seeker in the UK, is the winner this year.

Gayrightsuganda.org “documents the organised campaign of violent religious and state-sponsored homophobia sweeping the strategic African nation,” saidILGCN.

The Book Prize handover ceremony will take place during a public demonstration tomorrow sponsored by the National Union of Students outside Uganda House in Trafalgar Square, London.

“It is deeply moving to see our 2008 book prize awarded to Kizza Musinguzi and gayrightsuganda.org,” said ILGCN Literature Secretary Ian Stewart.

“The worsening situation for lesbians and gay men in Uganda at the hands of the Anglican Church and BAe reveals the violent homophobia with which the UK Establishment is happy to be associated, in callously exploiting some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

The International Lesbian & Gay Cultural Network was founded in 1992.

Last month two human rights advocates in Uganda were held for a week without charges after police accused them of “recruiting homosexuals.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the illegal detention of George “Georgina” Oundo and “Brenda” Kiiza was part of “a pattern of police harassment of LGBT people in Uganda.”

They were held seven days without being brought before a judge or having charges laid against them.

President of Uganda Kaguta Yoweri Museveni and other officials have spoken out against homosexuals on numerous occasions.

In June this year, Ugandan Bishop Luzinda said:

“I have been hearing that gays are demanding that the government should legalise their activities.

“This is absurd because God created a man and woman so that they can produce and fill this world.

“The government should not be tempted to legalise this backward culture which is bound to destroy this country.

“Not all that comes from Europe is superior and must be taken up by us,” Bishop Luzinda said.

Mr Museveni spoke of his country’s “rejection” of homosexuality during a speech he gave at the wedding of a former MP’s daughter earlier this year.

He said the purpose of life was to create children and that homosexuality was a “negative foreign culture.”

During his time in office LGBT Ugandans have been repeatedly threatened, harassed or attacked. Many have fled the country.

Uganda LGBT emergency demonstration

In recent weeks, the Ugandan Government has once again launched a campaign to arrest those who 'Recruit Homosexuals'. The Ugandan police autorities currently hold lists of those it suspects of the 'crime' of homosexuality, and just two days ago, Pastor Isaac Kyoobe Kiweweesi has been investigated for alleged homosexuality.

In the UK, those who flee such persecution and seek asylum are subject to further discrimination by the home office. Kizza Musinguzi and Prossy Kakooza are just two of those seeking asylum in UK.

NUS LGBT, in conjunction with Gay Rights Uganda, will be holding a demonstration on Ugandan Independance Day outside the Ugandan Embassy in London, to protest against the persecution of LGBT people in Uganda, and the treatment of those who are lucky enough to escape to the UK.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

12:00pm - 1:00pm

Uganda House

Trafalgar Square

London, United Kingdom

For more information, please email Lucy Brooks

• www.officeronline.co.uk/lgbt
• www.gayrightsuganda.org

NUS Press release

Students demonstrate against persecution in Uganda

Today, the National Union of Students’ LGBT campaign will be holding a demonstration outside the Ugandan Embassy in protest against a recent campaign of intimidation directed at LGBT people in Uganda.

Over recent weeks the ‘Red Pepper’ magazine (based in Uganda) has reportedly been running a campaign to “out” LGBT people, publishing articles claiming that a number of students as well as several prominent public figures are gay or lesbian. Amnesty International has received reports that a number of those named have since suffered harassment, and have been ostracized by their colleagues and family.

The organisation has also raised concerns that by naming these individuals, the magazine has put them at high risk of violence in a country where homosexuality is currently a criminal offence. This new development adds to an ongoing spate of abuse against the rights of LGBT people who have repeatedly been targeted by the Ugandan authorities.

NUS LGBT Officer, Scott Cuthbertson said:

“Sexuality is not a crime. People around the world should be free to express who they are without fear of intimidation, arrest, or even torture. I call on the Ugandan government to stop persecuting its LGBT citizens and repeal laws criminalising what should be a human right. I stand in solidarity with the LGBT community in Uganda - their struggle is our struggle, and that is why we are demonstrating today.”

NUS LGBT Officer (women’s place) Claire Anderson added:

“Today we are doing something which would be difficult if not impossible in Uganda. We are fortunate to live in a country where we are not classed as criminals because of our sexuality. LGBT people in Uganda are not so lucky, and are forced to hide their true identities for fear of recriminations. I call on the International LGBT community to stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT community of Uganda in the face of this cruel intolerance.”

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said:

“Discrimination against and persecution of people on the grounds of their sexuality is clearly forbidden in international human rights law. The campaign of intimidation of LGBT people in Uganda must stop. And the criminalization of homosexuality in Uganda’s penal code should be immediately repealed.”

Peter Tatchell, gay and human rights campaigner for OutRage! will also be joining the demonstration on Friday.

He added: “I urge the Ugandan government to accept the diversity of humanity, including the existence of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. One of the hallmarks of an enlightened, democratic society is live-and-let-live. Majorities should respect minorities, even if they don't always agree with them. I call upon the people of Uganda to show understanding and acceptance of their fellow citizens who love people of the same sex.”

Source

Lesbian Hunger-Striker Ends 33-Day Fast in UK

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Source: UK Gay News

A Zimbabwean lesbian protesting against her detention without trial in a Bedfordshire asylum centre has ended her 33-day hunger strike.

Thando, an asylum applicant, aged 29, had been protesting against her six-month incarceration in the notorious Yarls Wood asylum detention centre near Bedford.

“She is not a criminal. Thando was the victim of homophobic violence in her native Zimbabwe. She fled to the UK to escape beatings and arrest because of her sexuality,” said Kizza Musinguzi, African Affairs spokesperson of the lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender human rights group, OutRage!, which is backing Thando’s asylum claim.

“Thando had been made very ill by her month-long hunger-strike.  She was transferred to Bedford Hospital.

“Having won the right to a bail hearing,  Thando took the decision to end her hunger-strike,” Mr Musinguzi said.

“Yarls Wood has been condemned by human rights campaigners for its repeated abuse of detainee’s rights.

“In early December, human rights campaigners persuaded an independent doctor, Frank Arnold, to examine Thando in Yarls Wood.  He assessed her condition as very poor.

Dr Arnorld recommended that she be taken to hospital immediately, in order that she could gradually be reintroduced to food and receive special nutritional supplements.

“Yarls Wood initially refused to comply,” he revealed.  “Eventually, Yarls Wood relented and she was hospitalised.

“Thando has now received medical treatment and is slowly recovering.  Last week, she was transferred from hospital back to Yarls Wood.  But the asylum detention authorities are still not following medical advice and giving her the special vitamin supplements she needs to aid her recovery.

“We are backing Thando’s bail application and her bid for asylum in the UK. It would be criminal to return her to the hell-hole that is Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe,” said Mr Musinguzi.


Thando – Background Briefing

by Kizza Musinguzi, African Affairs spokesperson  OutRage!:

All through school Thando was interested in nursing and studied for her Red Cross certificates and became a trainee nurse.

Thando realised she was lesbian when she was 17.  When her parents learned about her sexuality, they subjected her to severe beatings and turned her in to the police.  Officers warned her to renounce her lesbianism, otherwise she would be arrested.

Fearful of further beatings and arrest, she escaped to South Africa in 1994. She had to cross the border illegally because she had no valid travel documents and South Africa often refuses Zimbabwean asylum seekers.  Thando was twice arrested as an illegal refugee and put into South Africa’s notorious Lindela  repatriation camp.  Many Zimbabwean refugees are incarcerated there.

South Africa does not normally accept Zimbabwean asylum seekers and often deports them back to Zimbabwe.

Conditions in the Lindela camp are appalling. The food is poor and many detainees get food poisoning. Some die. Women are crammed up to 30 to a room, even women who have children or are pregnant. The blankets are dirty and are not washed from one person to the next.

Twice Thando got out from Lindela camp with the help of friends who bribed the guards. The second time she met a man and, in desperation, went to live with him.

After a year of staying with him, he found out she was a lesbian. The beatings started on a regular basis, sometimes daily. He forced her to go out and work as a prostitute.  After a year of enduring these beatings, one day he attacked her with a broom stick and beat her so severely that her leg was damaged and she was taken to hospital. Thando still has problems with her leg and was taken from Yarls Wood to Bedford hospital three months ago for treatment on the leg.

After the beatings, she managed to escape from her tormentor and went into hiding.

Thando was afraid of being arrested by the South African police and put back in Lindela camp or, worse still, being arrested and deported back to Zimbabwe.

Fearful of such a fate, Thando was helped out by a friend's boyfriend, who paid for a ticket for her to come to the UK.  Since she did not have a Zimbabwe passport, the only way she could get to the UK was on a false South African passport.

Since leaving Zimbabwe, Thando’s father has died.  Through the help of her sister, who explained Thando’s lesbianism, she is now reconciled with her mother, who sent Thando her Zimbabwean birth certificate to confirm her nationality (which was being disputed by the Home Office).

Thando has been held at Yarl's Wood asylum detention centre for six months.

When she first arrived in the UK, she was refused entry.  She did not know she had to ask for asylum immediately on arrival.  She was returned to South Africa.  Her friend got her another ticket two weeks later and this time she knew what to do.  She asked for asylum on arrival.  Since then, she has been held in Yarls Wood asylum detention centre.”

Bid to Deport Gay Ugandan Torture Victim by UK Government

Source: UK Gay News

A twenty-five years old refugee who was jailed by the Ugandan government for his gay human rights work and subjected to four months of forced labour, water torture, beatings and rape, from May to September 2004, is today facing deportation, Outrage! has revealed today.

It was only the ‘eleventh hour’ intervention of a Member of Parliament that stopped the refugee from being deported last week.

The British Home Office wants to deport Kizza Musinguzi on the grounds that it claims the abuse he was subject to does not constitute persecution.  It says Mr Musinguzi is a not a legitimate asylum seeker and does not qualify as a genuine refugee.

And Outrage! has also re veiled allegations that the Ugandan was subjected to serious mistreatment by the British authorities after arriving in the country and seeking asylum, with much of the treatment being not unlike what he was subjected to in Uganda.

In Harmondsworth asylum detention centre in west London, described by Outrage! as “an often lawless place where the human rights of asylum seekers are systematically abused without redress”, Mr Musinguzi alleges that staff racially and homophobically abused him as a “nigger” and “batty boy”,

He says he was denied him medical treatment for the effects of rape and torture, forced him through the asylum system without legal representation, confiscated his asylum papers and asthma inhaler, subjected him to the sexual abuse of an unwarranted internal anal examination, and attempted to deport him without serving him with a removal order.

The Home Office forced Mr Musinguzi through the asylum system without legal representation. Having no solicitor and no knowledge of the UK legal system, and being detained and unable to gather evidence to support his asylum claim, he failed at every hearing.

He was forced to represent himself in an appeal against refusal of asylum and to write his own application for a statutory review of his case.

Then the Home Office fast-tracked Mr Musinguzi for deportation as a failed asylum seeker.  He is now fighting deportation with legal support and advice from the LGBT human rights group OutRage!

Peter Tatchell of OutRage! drafted an application to halt Mr Musinguzi’s unlawful deportation on  September 21.  This was forwarded to Home Office Minister, Tony McNulty MP, and endorsed by Harmondworth Labour MP, John McDonnell, whose intervention resulted in Mr Musinguzi’s deportation being stopped just as he was about to be put on a plane at Heathrow airport.

Mr Musinguzi comes from a political dissident family. His father was murdered by the Ugandan security services in November 1997, after seeking election in a constituency contested by a government Minister who is now the second deputy Prime Minister, Henry Kajura.

His mother and sister were arrested in February 2001 because of their work for the Ugandan opposition movement, the Reform Agenda. They have never been seen or heard of since they were seized.

Fearing for his life, Mr Musinguzi fled to Britain and claimed asylum. He was placed in detention at Harmondsworth asylum removal centre in west London on 5 May 2005.

Last month and desperate for legal help, Mr Musingizi appointed Peter Tatchell as his legal representative, as he is entitled to do.  He instructed Mr Tatchell to submit a fresh claim for asylum, based on new evidence gathered by an independent researcher, which confirms widespread homophobic persecution in Uganda.  Mr Tatchell submitted this fresh asylum claim on September 15.

Yet the Harmondsworth Fast Rack Office refused to accept Mr Tatchell as his legal representative and refused to accept the fresh claim.  They actively blocked attempts by Mr Musinguzi to confirm that Mr Tatchell was acting on his instructions.

On September 21, the Home Office attempted to deport Mr Musinguzi, despite his fresh claim for asylum based on new evidence and despite the fact that he was never served with a removal order.

Mr Tatchell contacted Harmondsworth’s Labour MP, John McDonnell, who got the deportation order stopped just as Mr Musinguizi was being frog-marched onto a flight back to Uganda.

Mr Musinguzi is now being held at Colnbrook detention centre in west London; still under threat of deportation.

During his five months detention in Harmondsworth, Mr Musinguzi was denied medical screening, treatment and counselling for the effects of rape and torture – despite suffering from intense pain in his groin and bleeding when defecating.

He alleges that Harmondsworth staff subjected him to racist, homophobic and sexual abuse, including an unwarranted and unexplained strip-search and internal anal examination, which echoed the abuse he suffered in Uganda.

Staff allegedly insulted him with taunts like “come here nigger” and “batty boy”.

And the Harmondaworth staff confiscated Mr Musinguzi’s asthma inhaler soon after his arrival, causing him months of breathing difficulties and great distress.  They also confiscated all his papers relating to his asylum claim.

In a letter to the Home Office minister, Tony McNulty MP, dated 22 September, Mr Tatchell wrote:

“I respectfully request that any action to remove Mr Musinguzi from the United Kingdom be suspended, pending his securing of professional legal representation, the formal presentation of the new evidence by Mr Musinguzi’s new solicitors, an assessment of Mr Musinguzi by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, the administration of appropriate medical treatment, and an investigation of his claims of abuse by staff at Harmondsworth.”

Commenting on Mr Musinguzi’s treatment by the Home Office, Mr Tatchell said: “Mr Musinguzi’s fast-tracking through the asylum system without legal representation is typical of the way many asylum applicants are denied a fair hearing.

“We know from our experience that very few asylum claimants receive adequate legal representation.

“The fast track system is fundamentally flawed.  It’s aim is to deport as many asylum seekers as quickly as possible; usually with scant regard to the merit of individual cases.

“Harmondsworth is an often lawless place where the human rights of asylum seekers are systematically abused without redress.

“Staff can make potentially life and death decisions without any proper checks and balances against the violation of an asylum seeker’s legal, medical and emotional welfare.

“The entire asylum system needs reform to ensure that every asylum claimant gets adequate legal representation and medical attention.

“We thank Labour MP John McDonnell for his help in getting Mr Musinguzi’s deportation halted last week,” said Mr Tatchell.

“It is extremely significant and disturbing that a 25-year old non-violent gay-rights activist should be detained and tortured in Uganda’s most violent anti-terrorism facilities, he continued.

“This is suggestive of an ongoing risk of torture and abuse if Mr Musinguzi is returned to Uganda.

“It is essential to Kizza’s fresh asylum claim that he is urgently examined by a doctor able to give him a full medical examination, since he has traces of injuries consistent with his account of torture,” Mr. Tatchell concluded.

Evidence of homophobic persecution in Uganda, and of the torture and rape of Kizza Musinguzi        

Kizza Musinguzi is a Ugandan gay activist who has been detained at Harmondsworth since 5 May, 2005.

He was a member of the Ugandan gay rights group Lesgabix. This organisation and its members were subjected to homophobic persecution by the Ugandan authorities. The murder of one of its members in 2001 was reported on the African gay rights website, Behind the Mask, (Archive, 2001, accessible by Google search by ‘Lesgabix, Uganda’).

After the state suppression of Lesgabix, Kizza worked with Sexual Minorities Uganda, whose members the security services detained and mistreated as recently as 20 July 2005 (see Amnesty International Index: AFR 59/003/2005 (Public), News Service No: 208, 2 August 2005).

We can confirm the existence and bona fides of the human rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, and the fact that this group and its members have suffered sustained state persecution.

Kizza was arrested in May 2004 and tortured in the notorious secret Joint Anti-Terrorism facility at Kololo, deemed illegal by Human Rights Watch (Human Rights Watch: Uganda: Concerns regarding Torture: Patterns and cases of torture, May 2005, http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/uganda0505).

This torture of Mr Musinguzi at Kololo included instrumental rape (with a large, coarse corn cob) by state agents, causing internal wounds and bleeding, and severe groin pain, which continue to this day. At Kololo he was also beaten repeatedly while chained to a wall.

Kizza was then transferred to Luzira Upper Prison in May 2004, where 23-year old Benjamin Buloba was apparently raped until he died in agony in October (See The Monitor, Kampala, December 5, 2004, Financial Times Information, All Africa Global Media, Diseases, overcrowding raging in jailhouses,). He was kept in Luzira from 13th to 26th May 2004.

Kizza was transferred again to one of Uganda's main political detention facilities, at Gulu, in Northern Uganda, which has been the subject of several Human Rights Watch enquiries, most recently in May 2005.

He was required to perform forced labour at Gulu from 26 May 2004 until approximately 4 September 2004. At Gulu, he was beaten regularly on his head, legs and back with sticks, gun-butts and heavy wet folded towels.

These beatings happened approximately every two days.

He was also frequently slapped. When he was unable to lift blocks of stone, around 29 May 2004, shortly after his arrival at Gulu, he was blindfolded, gagged and force-fed water through his nose for about ten minutes. The guards repeated this procedure towards the end of June. This and many of the other instances of abuse were accompanied by ethno-centric/tribalist and homophobic abuse, and threats he would be burned alive.