by Jennifer Lee O’Brien – Leeds No Borders
What would you do if you had to choose between living your life as a lie, or living a life-in-waiting?
This is the reality for Orashia Edwards, a 33 year-old bisexual man who left his home-country of Jamaica in 2001 to seek asylum and join his family living in the United Kingdom.
Jamaica, once deemed “the most homophobic place on Earth”, is one of the 80 member states of the United Nations where consensual acts between same-sex adults are criminalized. Six of these states deem homosexuality as punishable by death.
While homosexuality isn’t illegal in Jamaica, the ‘buggery’ or ‘gross indecency law’ – whereby an individual is liable for ten years imprisonment with hard labour for anal sex – is symptomatic of the largely accepted homophobic attitude pervasive in Jamaica society, the result of which is rejection and isolation for LGBTQ members from their communities.
While legal persecution is certainly a harrowing prospect for gay residents of Jamaica, the ‘mob’ can be just as, if not more, frightening. It is a chilling fact that there exists no legislation in Jamaica protecting LGBTQ individuals from hate crimes, leaving them vulnerable to violent attacks.
Many asylum-seekers have had to suppress their sexual orientation whilst living in their country, and in a bid for security, employ heterosexual identities so as not to be discovered. Orashia was only 16 when he moved to Antigua to marry an older woman, a relationship that eventually subjected him to years of mental abuse as she threatened to expose his sexuality.
Living in fear and isolation was almost too much to bear, leading Orashia to develop anxiety and depression as he internally battled with his contrived double-existence. It wasn’t until 2011 that Orashia managed to seek asylum in the United Kingdom, where he could live openly as a bisexual. In the safety of family and friends he could begin to process years of psychological damage.
But things were not idyllic, or even remotely sustainable. As an asylum-seeker, Orashia was under almost constant threat of deportation, remained unable to work and received menial health support from the state. While living in the UK had granted him the freedom to live as a bisexual without fear of persecution, it refused to let him move forward and build a future.
Having to live off the support of his family, and spending week after week reporting to the immigration office just to ensure he’d remain in the system, forced Orashia into an anxious state of limbo; his depression worsened further still, and he was left without hope for a real life.
It was after two years of waiting that Orashia’s fears were realised, after one of his weekly visit to sign-on with immigration culminated with his detainment and a call for immediate deportation. Protests by friends, family, and advocacy groups kept Orashia from being deported, and he was released from the detention centre a month later pending judicial review.
Still hopeful, his supporters rallied behind him and signed petitions, garnering broad-scale media attention both in the UK and abroad, leaving him exposed to hate speech from residents of Jamaica as his bisexuality became even more publicized. And yet, somehow Orashia wasn’t bisexual ‘enough’, at least for the UK Border Agency (UKBA); only a few months after his release, a judge deemed Orashia’s claim to a bisexual identity as ‘dishonest’ and without credibility, the result of which was his detainment at Colnbrook Detention Centre, miles away from his family and friends in Leeds.
For LGBTQ asylum-seekers, Orashia’s story is all-too familiar. While persecution on the basis of sexual orientation is recognised by the UKBA as a just reason for asylum, a 2010 report from Stonewall revealed that an alarming 98% of LGBTQ asylum-seekers were refused at the initial application stage – a marked difference to the general refusal of 76.5% of all asylum applicants.
Like Orashia, many people claiming asylum in the UK are denied based on issues of ‘credibility’ as determined by UKBA staff, many of whom are not properly trained on LGBTQ issues and are under pressure to meet target demands.
Upon reaching the UKBA, asylum-seekers are processed through an initial screening interview in which they are asked a series of basic questions which includes their reason for claiming asylum. As many asylum-seekers are often hesitant or fearful of disclosing their sexual orientation in a public, government setting, they may refrain from including it from the start, which is marked as an inconsistency later on in the process. This point will likely be raised in the full interview, where the asylum-seeker’s claim is comprehensively ‘tested’ for its accuracy and viability with further questioning.
As the report highlights, candidates for asylum are often asked by UKBA to ‘prove’ their sexual orientation by providing intimate details of experiences, offer reasons as to why they ‘think they’re homosexual’, and consider the option of being ‘discreet’, so as to not endanger themselves in their country. Many asylum-seekers have been previously married or had children – either as a means to hide their sexual orientation or in forced-marriages – which puts them under further scrutiny from the UKBA who will demand an explanation.
As LGBTQ asylum-seekers are often the victims of sexual assault, being forced to provide details of intimate experiences in an uncomfortable setting can be psychologically distressing, in addition to being invasive and dehumanizing. That the UKBA consider it a viable option for individuals to live their ‘lifestyle’ ‘discreetly’ points to an archaic and institutionalized form of homophobia on the part of the UKBA, which is in dire need of education.
Why should someone like Orashia – who has suffered years hiding his identity in fear of persecution – be asked to provide some kind of concrete ‘evidence’ of his bisexuality? How can we demand those who seek refuge to exist in a displaced state of waiting as we decide whether they’re worthy of life?
Thanks to the support and hand work of his loving friends, family, and advocacy groups, on September 4th, Orashia was given bail. Like many others, he’s still waiting.
The post Orashia’s Story – LGBTQ Asylum Seeker Faces Deportation appeared first on EQView.