A heartbreaking story – ‘Why was I born gay in Africa?’ – is running at the Guardian site. In it, Elizabeth Day interviews two Ugandans – one man, one woman – who have experienced deep levels of persecution both at home in Africa and in the UK, where they sought asylum from oppression.
Day interviews John Bosco, originally from Kampala, now in the UK until at least 2014, as well as a woman named Florence, whose experience in Uganda was one of literal torture at the hands of authorities abusing her because of her sexuality.
“To say it was painful is an understatement,” says Florence now. “You can take being hit but being humiliated around God knows how many people – you lose your dignity. I felt, I wish I could die now.”
Also quoted: Dr. Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University in Kampala:
The political climate in Uganda “enables a wide range of abuses and violations that seriously diminish the quality of life of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, most of whom seek to stay under the public radar. It also places many such persons in serious and extreme danger.”
Both Florence and John’s histories include moments of their asylum status being rejected by British judges, who sent them back to Uganda. Some of that’s been remedied, Day says, but much remains to be done.
In July 2010, the UK’s Supreme Court categorically denounced the “discretion reasoning” that had been central to the rejection of both Florence’s and John’s refugee claims, ruling that the decision failed to recognise the human rights of homosexuals and breached the UN refugee convention. The Home Office has since produced a set of guidelines, in consultation with asylum groups, on how to assess the validity of such claims, and all senior case-workers have been put through a one-day training session on the connected issues. “That process finished at the end of February,” says Erin Power, “so we don’t know what the outcome will be. Obviously we hope there will be some improvement because some of the interviewing was horrific, quite honestly.”
The point is that here are two people who were mishandled, misinterpreted, and misunderstood both in their native land and in the land in which they sought refuge. Nothing’s perfect; but in only one of those places, of course, are their lives actually at stake.