Now the bad news, from the same source –
Our urgent action is needed over the next three days to stop the deportation of another Yarl’s Wood lesbian asylum seeker, this time to Uganda. Aisha N has lived here for 11 years. Like most LGBT people seeking a sanctuary in Britain she did not claim asylum on sexuality grounds – you don’t know if it is safe to ‘come out’, and indeed sexuality was not clearly or securely established as a possible basis for asylum at that time. Instead she claimed asylum on political grounds – in fact she had been involved in political activity against the Kenyan government even though that was not the main reason for her seeking asylum – but she was refused anyway. Like so many victims of inherently racist immigration policies Aisha had to stay here by any means necessary – until she was arrested and imprisoned for possessing a false passport in 2010, making her, in the Government’s eyes, a ‘foreign national criminal’. Her history has been used by the Home Office and the Immigration Judge as reasons not to accept her credibility as a lesbian: everything that the immigration and asylum system forced Aisha to do in order to stay safe from anti-gay violence in Uganda has been turned into a so-called ‘justification’ for sending her back there.
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Now Aisha has been given ‘removal directions’ via Kenya Airlines for this Saturday, 27 July at 8.00pm on flight KQ101 from London Heathrow, Terminal 4.
Movement for Justice has suggestions on what to do to prevent Aisha N’s deportation.
Thanks for sharing this, Ophelia.
Sadly, this is all too common a story. Since the Supreme Court decision in HJ (Iran) and HT (Cameroon) established that gay and lesbian people can qualify for asylum if they would be unable to live openly in their home countries, the strategy of the Home Office has been to simply refuse to believe that anyone is “really” gay or lesbian. One immigration barrister even said that some of his clients had resorted to filming themselves having sex in order to prove their sexuality. Immigration judges are often ignorant and prejudiced, with judges at appeal hearings reportedly asking lesbian asylum-seekers whether they had attended a Pride parade, read any Oscar Wilde, or used sex toys. A whistleblower from the UKBA’s Cardiff office revealed that asylum case owners are extremely prejudiced against asylum-seekers, and that management puts pressure on them to refuse all asylum claims, however meritorious.
The immigration system is a cruel farce, and most of the British public doesn’t even know or care. Movement for Justice activists said it best: “the entire immigration system is racist, homophobic, sexist and rotten to the core.”