"Ich bin ein Niemand" ["I'm a nobody"]: Gay Iranian refused German asylum

Sepehr Nazari

Source: Frankfurter Rundschau (via Google translate)

By Von Marian Brehmer

Sepehr Nazari is gay and comes from Iran. Where gays are executed when they are discovered. Nazari took refuge in Germany, presented an application for asylum, and learned that he is not welcome here.

Sepehr Nazari, 25 years old, would like to start a new life without fear. But it's not that simple.

In Iran, the country Sepehr Nazari comes from, men like him do not exist. At least, says the  Iranian president,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When asked in 2007 during a visit to New York's Columbia University about homosexuality in Iran, he shrugged his shoulders. He did not know what was the question. There are gays in America perhaps, but not in Iran.

The country Nazari talks of seems to be another one to Ahmadinejad's. He knew many gay men in Iran. He tells of secret hangouts and gay cafes, five queer identified online newspapers he has written for. At an international Online Dating Service for homosexuals were just in his home city of Tehran thousands of gays with profiles - more than in Berlin, he says.

Being gay in Iran is dangerous. The article 110 of the "hadd punishments for homosexuality" is: "The hadd punishment for homosexuality in the form of transport is the death penalty. The method of killing is at the discretion of the judge." But even "who has a kissing another of sensuality, is punished with a Tazir penalty of up to 60 lashes." Since 1979, according to Iranian human rights activist, four thousand homosexuals have been executed.

Sepehr Nazari in the spring of 2011 sought asylum in Germany, he currently resides in Dresden, and often comes to Berlin. As a meeting place the 25-year-old has picked his favorite cafe, located in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin Reichenberg. In perfect English he tells his story.

Sent to the psychologist

At fourteen, he knew he was gay. Once, when his friend was visiting, Sepehr's mother burst into the room. She saw her son, entwined with a man, "This is immoral! I knew that you're spoiled," she shrieked. The friend fled from the apartment. Sepehr locked himself in the shower, until his father persuaded him to come out. This is only a phase that will pass soon, his father said. Since then the two have never spoken a word about his homosexuality.

Homosexuality is against nature, it is contrary to God's will. How often has Sepehr heard this. However, his parents are not religious, but rather concerned about the family, neighbors and friends. What to think? "I've always asked my mother what she really thinks," said Sepehr. He never received a reply.

Instead, his mother sent him to a psychologist. Some doctors in Iran are focused on the "disease" of homosexuality, prescribing electric shocks as therapy. Sepehr Nazari was lucky. The lady examined him and asked many questions. The result: He had a strong personality. Nothing more.

Sepehr never had trouble with the police. In the university no one knew about his homosexuality, he never talked to anyone about it. A double life? He laughs. "No, a multiple life. A life for the university, one for work, one for friends, one for close friends and one for the family. "

Once, Sepehr complained about a professor at the university because the language students had been only hours to translate Koran verses. He wrote a complaint letter to the dean.

Shortly after Sepehr got a call from the Secret Service. They want to meet with him to clarify a few things, it said. Through friends at the university he learned that the agency knew of his homosexuality. In March, the Persian New Year holidays, Nazari was flying on a Schengen visa to the Netherlands. There he wanted to visit some friends he knew from student exchange. The return ticket was already booked for Iran. But then he came to Berlin, met old friends from the German course. They convinced him not to return to Iran. Only then did he realize that his return could actually be dangerous for him.

He applied for in June 2011. Priority is given to applicants who have been tortured or leave their homeland for political reasons. Homosexuals are not considered hardship cases and thus can not count on a quick settlement of the asylum application. Not even when they face the death penalty in their homeland.

"War zone" in Chemnitz

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Evil against LGBT: Ostensibly in the name of god + the law

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Gay Kenya

By Danny

Shocking, but true, is to learn that out of 76 countries that currently criminalize homosexuality, 45 are former British anti gay colonies whose modern elites in charge of current governments are largely Christian.

The legacy of Christianity and British rule and morality in many parts of the modern world need careful and urgent scrutiny in the light of millions of suffering human lives as a result of the consequences of that legacy.

The legacy is weighing heavily on the shoulders of the LGB who, among other evils, risk suffering the death penalty or life imprisonment for being gay and are excluded from national HIV strategies in many countries because (according to the Law), they remain an illegal group.

In recent times, we have witnessed the worst homophobia and anti-gay hate incidences in countries like Uganda, Malawi and Nigeria. Coalitions have been formed (like; Coalition for the Restoration of Moral Values; headed by Dr. James Nsaba Buturo, former Ugandan Ethics minister) and registered with government departments to have a legal mandate for their work.

Legislations have been drafted with clear and legalized objectives to systemically commit evil against innocent citizens (members of the LGBT community).  These activities are spearheaded and supported by religious leaders and protected by the law.

More than half of the countries, who deny basic information and health services to gender and sexual minorities within their national boundaries, do so because of religious and largely Christian beliefs that strongly influence public policies.

Public health and human rights advocates have spoken for over a decade about the risks of creating these significant holes in the fabric of comprehensive national health policies, but leaders in homophobic counties have chosen to keep their ears shut to this calling. This has left a gap in global interventions for universal access to health care, which is regrettable.

One wonders what leaders of today (both religious and political) want to be remembered for, 50 years from now. Do they want to be remembered for gross violations of global and fundamental human rights and a failed public policy on HIV/AIDS? Or do they want to be remembered for being a diverse global community that disagreed about a lot of things, but drew a sacred line at protecting human life and promoting families of birth and families of choice? 

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'Homosexual panic' grips Tunisian politics

Image by Magharebia via Flickr

Source: Gay Middle East

By Dan Littauer

Tunisia’s new interior minister, Ali Larayedh, has been embroiled in controversy and scandal as a leaked video allegedly shows him in a gay prison sex video. This scandal has outraged and inflamed public opinion regarding homosexuality which was already jittery due to the electoral political tactics that used sexuality in order to discredit various opponents.

18 January, a 45 minute long black and white video, dating from 1991, showing two men having sex, was posted on YouTube.  The occasional close-up on one of the men’s faces resembles Ali Larayedh, the current interior minister and a member of the ruling Islamist party Ennahda who won last years’ October elections after the first Arab spring rebellion which deposed dictator Ben Ali. The poor quality of the video makes it difficult to determine the video’s authenticity, or whether Larayedh is actually in the video.  The video on the site was quickly removed, although it is still available on file-sharing sites.

In 1990 Ali Larayedh was arrested by Ben Ali's police for his activity as a member of the then illegal Ennahda party and was sentenced to 15 years in prison after a show trial. He alleges that he has been tortured while serving his jail sentence, while in 1992 his wife was sexually assaulted during an investigation at the Ministry of the Interior.

The alleged video of Ali Larayedh from his time in prison was posted shortly after an announcement by the Tunisian government that three arrest warrants had been issued for senior officials at the Ministry of the Interior. Tarek, Tunisian Editor for Gay Middle East notes that “the security forces of Tunisia have largely remained intact since the time of Ben-Ali and thus many of its personnel are potentially hostile to the Ennahda party.” In other words, the video may have been leaked by someone in the Ministry of the Interior, or perhaps former a high-ranking police officer, wishing to undermine Ali Larayedh by further inciting public opinion using a tactic dubbed “porno politics” by Tunisian activist Ahmed Manaï.  According Manaï’s book, book, “Tunisian Torture: The Secret Garden of General Ben Ali”, tactics to discredit political opponents through exposing sexual scandals, and in particular homosexual ones were used by the deposed Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, during the early 1990s.

The background to this scandal is important to note.  Two days before this incident (16.1.12) Naji Behiri, the brother of the Tunisian Minister of Justice, Noureddine Behiri, was released from prison under presidential amnesty, despite allegation from his hometown that he raped a young boy. Tarek attests: “A wave of public anger erupted across the nation accusing Ennahda party of being at league with homosexuals and paedophiles, terms that were used interchangeably.  Highly homophobic comments were posted on related news articles and throughout the social networking sites, mostly asking that Naji Behiri remains in prison and tried and punished for sodomy.  Conspiracy theories of homosexual corruption and cover up within the Ennahda party have become commonplace.”

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Video: In US, another gay bi-national couple faces deportation

Via Towleroad

22 years after they first met, Mark and Frédéric, now with four children, faced a hearing at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Philadelphia to be interviewed in connection with the marriage-based immigration petition they filed last summer.

If the petition is not accepted, the family will be forced to leave the country. They will not separate. All because the federal government does not recognize same-sex married couples under DOMA and outdated immigration laws.

Stop the Deportations has a lengthy, detailed story on the couple's struggle.

And CNN has just done a story on Mark and Frédéric and their family.

New research on mental health of LGBT refugees

Image via Wikipedia

The Research Institute Without Walls, an NGO that does collaborative research on the impact of human rights violations on LGBT mental health, invites you to join the Collaborative Working Group for LGBT Asylum and Refugees.

Physician for Human Rights, Immigration Equality, and Psychologists for Social Responsibility are our first member groups.

The purpose of the Collaborative Working Group is to share information and coordinate research on the psychological effects of persecution and torture because of sexual orientation and gender identity in asylum seekers. This population faces special mental health challenges when navigating the challenges of rebuilding their lives.

We invite groups and individuals to join us in the formation and development of a working group that will allow us to collaborate on documenting the experiences of our clients. Gathering empirical data will allow us to more effectively help LGBT asylum seekers and refugees.

Our first project is a collaboration with Mike Corradini, asylum advocacy associate and attorney at Physicians for Human Rights. We are conducting the first empirical study on the impact of immigration detention on the mental health of LGBT refugees.

We are seeking LGBT persons who have been in detention who are willing to be interviewed about their experiences.

Please let us know if you would be interested in joining the Collaborative Working Group and/or might be able to refer to us LGBT persons who’ve been in immigration detention, who may be willing to be interviewed. Participation is confidential and interviews can be conducted by telephone. For more information you can contact Ariel Shidlo, PhD at ariel.shidlo@riww.org

Israel refuses citizenship for Israeli man's husband

Maayan Zafrir, an Israeli citizen, and his husband Felipe Javier Episcopo

Source: Dos manzanas via Google translate

Israel has refused to grant citizenship to a Uruguayan citizen married since 2008 with an Israeli. The couple, who have two young children, may be forced to appeal to the country's Supreme Court, which in 2006 accepted the request of five gay couples married to Israeli nationals abroad who asked to see their marriage recognized and forced the administration to register their marriages. What happened once again highlighted the complexity and paradoxical nature of the rules in matrimonial matters in Israel.

Felipe Javier Episcopo and Maayan Zafrir met online in 1999 and have lived together in Israel since 2001, where they are legally recognized as a couple, according to Israeli law. Episcopo legally immigrated to Israel where he was initially granted a visa and work permit in 2005 and obtained a temporary residence permit. In 2008 the couple married in Canada. Initially, there were no problems, the authorities accepted the marriage and updated the status of both. However, when Episcopo applied for citizenship (continued temporary residence permit), the Ministry of Interior refused to fully recognize the marriage, citing as the reason the existence of a regulation that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and rejected the request.

The couple is thus confronted with the paradox that the state recognizes marriage only in part. Zafrir denounced the attitude of the Ministry of Interior, stating that what most concerns him are his children (two years old twins) because, as things stand, if he died Felipe could no longer care for them. The couple spoke to New Family, an advocacy group fighting for LGBT rights. The group's founder, Irit Rosenblum, has denounced what he considers "a clear case of discrimination." "It is difficult to understand why the state has to act as discriminatory and humiliating, since the couple are already recognized," he said, noting that they are willing to go to the Supreme Court.

Last September we reported here in dosmanzanas the Israeli Interior Ministry decision to grant Israeli citizenship to Bayardo Alvarez, the non-Jewish spouse of a gay marriage. It was a historic decision, the first time that the 'law of return' was applied to a gay marriage. However, a ministry spokesman stressed that the decision would not necessarily be similar in other cases.

The law on marriage in Israel
 
What happened once again highlighted the need for reform of marriage laws in Israel. This is a situation that does not, of course, apply only to same-sex couples. In December, for example, the Ministry of Interior  refused entry to the country to the Nigerian husband of an Israeli woman, calling him 'just a sperm donor'.

In Israel there is only religious marriage, and most of the population used to join the rabbinate as Jewish orthodoxy (religious marriages may also be held Christians or Muslims). If a heterosexual couple wants to marry Israeli in a non-religious ceremony they must do so abroad, and then apply for registration in Israel. Many, in fact, of those who choose to cross the border to celebrate a secular marriage do it in Cyprus. According to polls, two thirds of the Israeli population supports the adoption of a civil marriage law. However, last year the Knesset (Israeli parliament) again rejected a proposal to that effect.

Related articles

• Israel's Citizenship Laws: Are They Archaic? (nycnyc.wordpress.com)
• Israel passes 'harsh' immigration law (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Torture killing of another trans person in Mexico

By Paul Canning

Mexican media reported 17 January on the brutal killing of an apparently transsexual person in Apodaca, near Monterrey in Northern Mexico.

The body of a man wearing women's clothes was found by police after local residents heard gun shots and explosions.

According to the police report, the body was found lying face down and was about 25 years old. It showed signs of torture, of being shot as he was beaten, his hands were semi-amputated and there was a written message that said "For Rat" ("Por Rata").

The body has reportedly not yet been identified but had a major identifying mark, a tattoo with the name "Pamela".

The Trans Murder Monitoring project recorded 23 reports of murders of trans people in Mexico in 2011. Last August, in Mexico City, the first national march against anti-gay hate crime took place. That claimed that 700 LGBT people had been murdered in 2011.

Last year it was reported that LGBT Mexicans fleeing for US sanctuary are increasingly finding their asylum requests turned down.

Related articles

• One trans person murdered worldwide every other day, figures show (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• 2011 International LGBT Roundup: Transgender and Intersex Rights (care2.com)
• Video: Mexican gay activist fleeing persecution surfaces in San Diego (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Video: Brave LGBT Russians protest in Red Square

Video source by VladimirIVANOV1945

 

Image gayrussia.eu

By Paul Canning

A small group of LGBT Russians have taken their protest against laws intended to silence their movement to every region - and last night they produced images of their protesting arrest in front of the Kremlin.

Their protest, signaled on social media to happen in another Moscow location, in fact occurred in front of the most famous location in all of Russia. Within seconds they were swarmed by police.

A small group of activists within the past fortnight have protested a law passed in the northern city of Arkhangelsk which effectively bans all gay organising. Supposedly to 'protect children', the law actually bans all LGBT public events and protests and the rhetoric surrounding it is explicitly against the emerging LGBT movement in Russia.

The dolls - Piggy, Stepashka, Fili and Karkushi - at the Red Square protest were from popular children's TV shows and the banners said "Good night, kids!"

Two Russian regions have already adopted the same law and the supposedly 'liberal' city of St Petersberg has voted in favour but has yet to pass the law. It is reportedly under discussion in Moscow and Novosibirsk and some have suggested it may become a federal law.

Related articles

• WATCH: Pro-LGBT Rally Attacked By Fascists In Moscow (queerty.com)
• St. Petersburg: How you can help fight anti-gay laws in Russia? (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Honduras is test of new American policy on gay rights

Protester holds up image of murdered gay leader Walter Trochez

Source: Tri-City Herald

By Tim Johnson

From U.N. chambers to the halls of the State Department, global pressure on countries to protect the rights of homosexuals and transgender people is rising.

For Josue Hernandez, the new emphasis can't come fast enough.

The 33-year-old gay activist bears the scar of the bullet that grazed his skull in an attack a few years ago. He's moved the office of his advocacy group four times. Still, he feels hunted in what is arguably the most homophobic nation in the Americas.

"We are in a deplorable state," Hernandez said of homosexuals in Honduras. "When we walk the streets, people shout insults at us and throw rocks. Parents move their children away."

Three months ago, a U.N. report declared that discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — or LGBT — violates core international human rights law. It listed nations where violations are most severe.

Joining a push that originated in Europe, the Obama administration said in December that respect for LGBT rights is now a factor in its foreign policy decisions.

"Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in what diplomats described as a landmark speech Dec. 6 in Geneva. "It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished."

But even as that view grows more prevalent, it has yet to translate into better security, less hostility or fewer killings in places like Honduras, a nation of 8 million people in Central America.

Since the beginning of 2010, Honduras has tallied at least 62 homicides within the LGBT community, and some experts say the count may be far higher. Some victims have been mutilated and even burned.

The killing of homosexuals is part of broader lawlessness. Honduras registered more than 6,700 homicides last year and has the highest per capita murder rate in the hemisphere.

One recent victim was Carlos Porfirio Juarez, a 25-year-old deaf mute who was taking hormones as part of a switch in gender to become "Karlita."

On Dec. 4, Juarez vanished while seeking sex clients at the Obelisco Park near the army general staff headquarters in Comayaguela, a city adjacent to the capital, Tegucigalpa.

"She didn't have a purse, a cellular phone or anything of value," said Jose Zambrano of the Association for a Better Quality of Life for those Infected with HIV/AIDS in Honduras.

"Only her life," added Zambrano's sister, Sandra, a leader of the group.

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Report: Who are the refugees 'lost' at Europe's borders?

Source: W2eu.info

LOST AT BORDER reports on the reality of loss and death at the Greek borders. As a close friend of ours said once:

“If you are a refugee and you die nobody asks any questions. But for living somewhere, everybody is questioning you!” We want to break the silence and ask: What happened with all these people whose traces got lost?

Accidents and death at border belong unfortunately to the daily experiences of refugees trying to reach a safe haven. The European Border Control Agency FRONTEX in co-operation with national authorities are heightening and thickening the fences and walls around us, controlling and patrolling the borders and externalizing them to European neighbour states such as Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia a.o.

They have created treaties of co-operation in deportations and huge refugee detention camps at the gates of Europe. Trying to cross a number of borders, among them the ones of Fortress Europe is a huge risk of death! The numbers are shocking: more than 2,000 people died in the Mediterranean Sea only in 2011. Each single person left behind a big gap in the life of relatives and friends.

LOST AT BORDER gives the voice mainly to refugees searching and mourning for their beloved. The report was made by a group of antiracist activists from different countries who have been already involved in the search of migrants who got lost at the border between Greece and Turkey.

It can be quite difficult to find information on what has happened when somebody is missing at the border. Apart from the report we want to help and fill this information gap by a new Blog. We want to connect the relatives and friends of border victims to each other and we want to let you know and feel that you are not alone on this journey! We will never forget. We promise to overcome the murderous border regime and to continue our struggle for a welcoming Europe.

Lost at Border

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Asylum seekers tunnel to freedom in Indonesia

Video by NewsOnABC

Image via Wikipedia

By Matt Brown

About 30 asylum seekers have escaped from an Indonesian detention centre by digging a tunnel under the wall.

The men escaped through the two-metre tunnel in Surabaya city after using spoons, nails and sticks to dig their way from a toilet, under the main gate to freedom.

As some dug, others had played the traditional South Asian board game of carrom to distract the guards.

All of them, including one who survived the shipwreck which killed about 200 people last month, are believed to be from the Hazara ethnic group.

Immigration officers learned of the Sunday night breakout when an elderly escapee was spotted on the road outside the detention centre in East Java.

So far just 12 have been recaptured.

"The migrants dug the tunnel from the restroom in the church, which is positioned close to the main gate," the head of the East Java provincial ministry, Mashudi, told AFP.

"They managed to dig a space wide and long enough to eventually find their way out."

The escapees said they were frustrated because they had been waiting more than a year for the UN refugee agency to assess their claims.

Some have travelled to Jakarta to press their case while others are believed to be trying to arrange a boat trip to Australia.

The immigration department chief in the province, Arifin Somadilaga, has ordered a crackdown on asylum seekers in the wake of the escape.

He has directed his staff to report all future breaches of discipline to the police who will be urged to treat the asylum seekers as criminals.

He says guards at the centre did not notice the detainees digging a hole under the wall because they are understaffed.

The escape comes after some of the detention centre's detainees told the ABC of beatings from guards.

One of the men who was beaten, Ali Mohammed, said he had earlier escaped the detention centre but was recaptured.

Related articles

• Indonesia 'mistreating' refugee disaster survivors (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Activists say Australia shares responsibility for latest asylum seeker deaths at sea (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Report: Trans woman killed by Cuban police

Image by flippinyank via Flickr

By Paul Canning

Florida-based news website Cubanet is reporting that a young transgender woman has been beaten to death in police custody in Cuba.

Eighteen-year-old Leidel Luis, who was known as Jessica, originally from the province of Santiago de Cuba and who lived with her partner named Yariel in Las Tunas, died after receiving a brutal beating in Guáimaro in Camaguey, southern Cuba.

It is alledged that she was picked up at a traffic stop 4 January by police calling her "faggot, nigger and disgusting."

The report is sourced to a prison inmate, Rolando Castro Sanchez who names those he alleges beat Luis to death as police officers Galindo Yarian Larena, Juan Ramon Lorenzo, their commanding officer Heriberto, and the sector chief Boris Luis Caballero. It is alleged that her body was removed after she was found dead in her cell in the middle of the night to an unknown location.

Cuba's Communist Party Congress, which opens 28 January, will reportedly adopt pro-gay provisions. Mariela Castro Espín, the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro and the leading advocate for LGBT rights in Cuba, wrote on her blog this week that the revision of the Family Code in 2013 will include recognition of same-sex couples.

However, continuing police harassment in Cuba, including arrests, has been reported on a number gay Cuban blogs, such as that of the Reinaldo Arenas Memorial Foundation. Gay Cuban blogger Francisco Rodríguez Cruz has also condemned 'irregularities' committed by Cuban police, who, he says, have repeatedly fined visitors to a gay meeting spot in central Havana. In September a death in custody of a transgender man was reported in Havana.

Dissident Roberto de Jesús Guerra, who was released from prison after two years in 2007, said last year that raids by police on LGBT meeting at several sites in the Cuban capital have been stepped up.

According to Imbert Leannes Acosta, director of El Observatorio Cubano de los Derechos de la Comunidad LGBT (OBCUD LGBT, Cuban Observatory of the Rights of the LGBT), repression of LGBT in Cuba is increasing, not only in Havana but "we have documented Matanzas [North Cuba] and Guantanamo [East Cuba] cases." He said that his group would protest repression to the United Nations.

The independent organisation has not been allowed to officially register. Under the slogan "Homosexuality is a matter of rights, not of opinions", OBCUD LGBT ran the "National Campaign for LGBT rights" in June 2011 which included a march 28 June.

A US State Department document released by Wikileaks last September suggests that non-state supported LGBT initiatives in Cuba are receiving American funding.

Related articles

• Cuban communists to oppose LGBT discrimination (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Finnish court stops removal of gay Iranian

Image via Wikipedia

Source: YLE

The Supreme Administrative Court sent back a Finnish Immigration Service decision to deport an Iranian asylum seeker who would face persecution in Iran for being gay.

The court sent the case back to the Immigration Service for further reconsideration, stating that case must be examined more closely.

The court said the Immigration Service must carefully examine whether Iranians have a legitimate reason to fear persecution in their homeland because of their sexual orientation.

Last week, YLE reported that Finland has deported asylum seekers to countries where they can be sentenced to severe penalties for their homosexuality.

Homosexuality is a crime punished with imprisonment and even execution in Iran.

Related articles

• Finland deported gays to dangerous countries, report claims (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Dancing Queens Scare Finnish MPs (care2.com)

Video: Persecution of gay people in Sri Lanka

Video by LGBTsrilanka



"Saman" is a graduate student in Sri Lanka who was doing research on 'safer sex' for his thesis. He told me that while he was working in the southern city of Galle, the local police detained and tortured him assuming he was gay.

While in detention he witnessed how the Sri Lankan police discriminated against other allegedly gay men who were locked up in jail. Fearing retribution, Saman did not want to show his face or use his real name in recording this experience.

Under the Sri Lankan penal code Section 365 A, homosexual acts are prohibited and "violators" face a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. While few cases have ever been prosecuted, the threat of public shame and blackmail looms large for Sri Lanka's gay community and this "dead letter" has become a greater threat in light of pervasive police corruption.

This is only one example of the codified homophobia in Sri Lanka and its oppressive side-effects. Similar incidents are still happening to LGBT individuals in Sri Lanka on a regular basis.

These incidents include, but are not limited to blackmail, violent threats, employment discrimination, and rejection by friends, family, the police, and society at large. Cases of physical assault, harassment, and detention are not uncommon.

Regardless, these incidents are more or less ignored by the Sri Lankan media; even when they are reported, their connection to homophobia is rarely articulated. Of course, many LGBT individuals are happy to keep these incidents quiet, fearing that they would be subject to further attacks if they were outed. Both gay and straight Sri Lankans hold a negative view of homosexuality.

Related articles

• Video: A gay Sri Lankan migrant story (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Video: Sri Lankan gay activist speaks out (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Swiss violated asylum law in ignoring thousands of Iraqi applicants

Image via Wikipedia

The Swiss Federal Office for Migration violated asylum and constitutional law by ignoring 7,000 - 10,000 asylum applications lodged by Iraqis at Swiss embassies in Syria and Egypt between 2006 and 2008, an external inquiry into the matter by former federal Judge Michel Féraud has found. The government has taken note of the report.

Féraud said that around 3,000 outstanding applications were still legally valid and should be processed by the end of 2013. However, the Government has maintained that no disciplinary action will be taken due to the lapse of time and that officials have not abused their authority in failing to process the claims.

The Swiss Senate adopted a proposal for the abolishing of the asylum procedure from abroad in December 2011. Both former federal Judge Féraud and the Swiss Refugee Council consider that this procedure should be kept.

Via: ECRE

Related articles

• Paper: In Europe but not necessarily of it: Switzerland, queer refugees, and Amnesty International (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Iraqi parliament condemns deportations from Europe (madikazemi.blogspot.com) 
• Why did Switzerland ignore thousands of Iraqi asylum requests? (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Ugandan ambassador: 'Kill gays' bill dead, 'no persecution'

Kamunanwire

Source: Washington Blade

By Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Uganda’s ambassador to the United States blasted the head of the United Negro College Fund for sending him an “incendiary” letter last week asking him to discuss an anti-homosexuality bill introduced in the Uganda Parliament in his scheduled speech at a Martin Luther King Day event sponsored by the Fund.

Ambassador Perezi K. Kamunanwire responded to that letter by withdrawing as keynote speaker at the King Day event, held Monday morning in Greenbelt, Md. In his own letter, he said United Negro College Fund president and CEO, Michael L. Lomax, “blindsided and startled” him with Lomax’s Jan. 12 letter raising the issue of the anti-homosexuality bill.

In addition, Kamunanwire claims in the letter that the Ugandan Parliament is not planning to reconsider a bill that would impose the death penalty for homosexual acts.

The ambassador, a former college professor who has taught at U.S. universities, said in his letter that he had been invited to speak on education-related issues at the King Day event.

Lomax said in his letter to Kamunanwire that he raised the issue of reports of anti-gay persecution in Uganda after receiving an inquiry from the Washington Blade and others asking why his organization invited a Ugandan official to speak at a King Day commemoration.

“Following a brief telephone conversation with Dr. Lomax in which I expressed concern that changing the topic would distract from our shared commitment to honor Dr. King’s legacy and advance the discussion of education equality, it was clear from his discourteous and insulting tone that I was no longer welcome,” Kamunanwire said in a Jan. 15 letter to William F. Stasior, chairman of the board of directors of the United Negro College Fund.

Kamunanwire sent a copy of his letter to Stasior to the Blade along with an email message expressing concern about the Blade’s story reporting he had withdrawn abruptly as a speaker for the King Day event. The Blade story cited a press release from the United Negro College Fund announcing Kamunanwire’s withdrawal as speaker.

“My staff at the Embassy of the Republic of Uganda, and members of the Ugandan American community, brought your article to my attention,” he said in his email to the Blade. “In an effort to clarify my decision to withdraw as keynote speaker from the UNCF’s 29th Anniversary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast fundraiser, I am sharing a letter which was sent to the chair of the UNCF board,” he said.

“This will be my only statement on the matter, as I withdrew my name so as not to distract from the importance of the King holiday and education equality,” he said. “It is my hope that the Washington Blade will report this matter fairly.”

Read more »

Refugee hunger strike in Ukraine

Source: No Deportations

In Ukraine, 61 Somalians have been on hunger strike since 6 January in the Lutsk detention centre with another 15 reportedly on hunger strike in another detention centre at Chernigiv. 13 of the hunger strikers are women (seven of whom are under the age of 18). 17 of the men are also under 18

"Either they recognise us as refugees - or they say 'no' and then tell the whole world what they are doing here" said one of the hunger strikers, Sultan Haibe, speaking from the detention centre. He continues "We are not murderers. We left Somalia just to save our life." 

The hunger strikers say that one 17 year old, Abdul Karim Siyad is very ill and in a separate room. He had not been examined by a doctor until recently, but Sultan Haibe said on Sunday 15January that a doctor has now finally seen him.

The hunger strikers say they are detained in an asylum system which is profoundly unjust. They say that Somalians are always refused asylum in Ukraine, but Sultan Haibe points out that if they try to cross into the EU they are bounced back into Ukraine and detained. Only about 12 of the hunger strikers had attempted this.

The hunger strikers say that they are subject to police harassment and corruption and can be detained by the authorities for periods of 12 months if they don't have a temporary permit to stay legally in Ukraine. They say that an asylum seeker can be re-detained within a short period after release and then faces another 12 months in detention. Some of the hunger strikers have been in Ukraine for 5 or 6 years before they were detained. Some have been detained more then once.

Their demands to the Ukrainian Government are:

1) Somalian asylum seekers are granted asylum status in Ukraine.

2) They are released from detention.

3) Asylum seekers are to be provided with documents so they cannot be arrested.

4) There is an end to the police harassment of asylum seekers.

5) No asylum seeker is to face re-arrest after a period of detention.

Ukraine's asylum procedure is in chaos. The arbitrary detention of the hunger strikers is just one more way in which the rule of law is ignored in Ukraine.

Recent asylum laws created a new Government department to examine asylum applications, but failed to give it authority to act, while the old department was dismantled. As a result, asylum seekers cannot make asylum applications so they cannot get temporary residence permits and so become illegal.

Asylum seekers who were already in the system often cannot obtain an extension of their temporary permits and are therefore subject to arrest as they become illegal. No decisions on refugee status are being made and asylum appeals are postponed as the new Government department is not recognised by judges.

Even those who have been granted refugee status in the past are often not receiving their residence permits – re-issued each year - and so become illegal.

The Government has increased the penalty for being without temporary residence documents from 6 to 12 months detention. Asylum seekers in Ukraine cannot work and do not receive financial support while they await the decision on their application.

The hunger strikers ask everyone to publicise and raise support for their demands as widely and as quickly as possible. If you are in the EU, please raise this with your parliamentary representative or Member of the European Parliament as Ukraine is sensitive to EU pressure.

Related articles

• In Ukraine, returned asylum seekers face abuse (madikazemi.blogspot.com) 
• In Ukraine, claims that refugees are being tortured (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
   

Video: Without any window of His own: Being gay in Bangladesh

Video by MrTanvirAlim

 

Image by erjkprunczyk via Flickr

Sometimes an image or a word says more than an action. Sometimes things cannot be expressed as bluntly because of fear and stigma.

Growing up, we were taught that society is where men and women get married, and that's how a relationship works. But at least 10% of the total population of a country belongs to the non-normative gender and sexuality.

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Report: Inadequate legal representation for migrants in New York

Source: New York Times

By Kirk Semple

They are often poorly prepared or make incoherent arguments in court. Some fail to present key evidence or witnesses. Others simply do not show up.

The performance of many lawyers who represent immigrants facing deportation in New York has long been considered mediocre. But in a new report that seeks to measure the extent of the problem, immigration judges themselves step forward and offer a scathing assessment of much of the lawyering they have witnessed in their courtrooms.

Immigrants received “inadequate” legal assistance in 33 percent of the cases between mid-2010 and mid-2011 and “grossly inadequate” assistance in 14 percent of the cases, the judges said. They gave private lawyers the lowest grades, while generally awarding higher marks to pro bono counsel and those from nonprofit organizations and law school clinics.

The study was conducted by a group of lawyers and researchers under the auspices of Robert A. Katzmann, a federal appellate judge in New York City. A year ago, they began sifting through government data and surveying immigration judges in an attempt to measure the quality and availability of legal representation for immigrants facing deportation.

Their report will be published this week in the Cardozo Law Review, a publication of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in Manhattan.

“We began this effort with an intuitive sense of the scale of the problem,” the report says. “The numbers sadly bear out that intuition in the starkest form.”

Read more »

Trans people 'hunted for fun' in Kuwait

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Kuwait Times

Arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and sexual assaults on transgender persons have increased in Kuwait during the last four years, says the Human Rights Watch (HRW). Transgender ‘women’ are individuals who are born male but identify themselves as female. “They hunt us down for fun” was the title of a HRW report on the issue of transgender, launched at the Le Royal Hotel yesterday.

Nadim Houry, HRW Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, slammed authorities for using Article 198 of the amended 2007 law to arrest, abuse and persecute a transgender. The 63-page report bears documents and testimonies by transgender women victimized by Kuwaiti police since 2008.

“The law has been a huge enabling factor to arrest and abuse members of the transgender. It is like giving a green light to authorities, not only to police but even members of society, to arrest and torture transgender persons and use force and impunity against them.”

According to Houry, the frequency of torture and abuses against the transgendered has definitely increased to a tremendous level in the past four years.

“Just before amending the law, we did not see such a huge number of abuses against transgender,” he added. HRW slammed Kuwaiti police for torturing and sexually abusing transgender women and called on the Gulf state to hold officers accountable.

“Our key recommendations are clear, we want the authorities here to investigate the torture, sexual assault and ill-treatment of detainees and prosecute those responsible in accordance with the law,” Al-Houry mentioned citing the content of the report.

“We want Kuwait to ensure that until its repeal (of amended 2007 law) the law is not applied to anyone who has been diagnosed with gender identity disorder,” the report added. Rasha Moumneh, HRW researcher, read out summary reports of about 40 transgender women who were arrested, harassed and abused by Kuwaiti police.

Transgender women reported that sexual assault they endured at the hands of policemen includes touching, groping, rape and blackmailing them into non-consensual sex by threatening to arrest them if they did not comply.

Transgender women have also reported degrading and humiliating treatment by police, which includes being forced to strip and parade around a police station, being forced to dance for officers, sexual humiliation and verbal intimidation.  According to Moumneh, a common complaint among transgender women is police blackmail for sex under threat of arrest. One of the testimonies read was the case of Rima, 27, who admitted to virtually being a sex slave during college days.

“In October 2009 I passed a checkpoint right outside my university gate. I got scared of course and turned back, but the policeman got suspicious. I stayed on campus for five hours until I was sure that the checkpoint moved. The next day I saw the same police officer. When I was walking towards my car, he stopped me and asked for my ID. I gave it to him, and immediately the sexual harassment started. He forced me to take off my top so he could see my breast, right in the middle of the parking lot. When I told him he had no right to treat me that way, he said “either you take my number and meet me for sex or I will take you to prison.” 

To avoid arrest and torture, Rima accepted the offer from the police officer and was enslaved for the rest of college, the testimony says.

Transgender women reported being arrested even when they were wearing male clothing and then later being forced by police to dress in women’s clothing. In some cases documented by Human Rights Watch, transgender women said police arrested them because they had a “soft voice” or “smooth skin.”  Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East Director, noted in a statement that “No one-regardless of his or her gender identity-deserves to be arrested on the basis of a vague, arbitrary law and then abused and tortured by police.”

“The Kuwaiti government has a duty to protect all of its residents, including groups who face popular disapproval, from brutal police behavior and the application of an unfair law,” she said in a statement.

Related articles

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• Breakthrough on transgender rights in ... Kyrgyzstan (madikazemi.blogspot.com)