HIV+ Ugandan Refugee Stays
posted: 11/02/2011
A Ugandan refugee with HIV managed to avoid being deported by refusing to board the plane at Heathrow early this week. Jamal Ali Said – who is HIV positive, claims he's gay and has lived in the UK for fifteen years – was due to be sent back to Uganda on Monday evening.
Jamal says he is at serious risk of persecution - potentially murder. His deportation was arranged barely two weeks after the Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato was brutally murdered, following a media campaign there that urged Ugandans to kill gay people.
Speaking from Campsfield detention centre in Oxfordshire, Jamal said he was "very frightened" because of "how they treat you in Uganda if you have HIV, if you are a gay man."
Deportation, despite Supreme Court ruling
According to Jamal’s lawyer, his application for refugee protection was refused, before the Supreme Court made a landmark decision for gay asylum seekers last year. The Supreme Court ruled that gay asylum seekers should be granted refugee status if being sent home would mean they would be forced to hide their sexuality – having to hide your sexuality breaches your human right to live a private life.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Jamal’s solicitor made a fresh application for asylum quoting the Supreme Court, but this was also refused.
Credit where credit's due - we have to thank the first woman Supreme Court Justice, Lady Hale (a former Manchester barrister and university law lecturer), for her wisdom and championing of the human rights of refused gay asylum seekers. In a recent BBC4 documentary on the Supreme Court, she talked about this landmark case, the different life perspectives women bring to the courts as judges, and her persuasion of the other judges to agree with her pioneering judgement.
You can read about this recent BBC4 programme 'Justice Makers' and watch some clips here.
Uganda Parliament and death for HIV sex
Homosexuality is punishable by up to 14 years in prison in Uganda, but a bill before the parliament would impose the death penalty on people with HIV who have sex.
Jamal is being held in Brook House Immigration Centre, near Heathrow, while the UK Border Agency decides whether to attempt to deport him again.
Source
Permalink