Stonewall's 2010 report "No Going Back; Lesbian and Gay People in the Asylum System" is a little out of date. It is fortunate that the judgment that the claimant maybe returned home to continue their life with "tolerable discretion," has now been declared in breach of human rights by the recent supreme court ruling. However, this brief report details a lot of major issues still faced by gay asylum seekers including;
- That they may have a sense of shame and stigma attached to being gay, and have rarely spoken about it.
- Due to this they struggle to be consistent in stories and see persecution as "caused" by their sexuality.
- They are penalised for not being immediately open about their sexuality.
- Focus by the UKBA and judges exclusively on same sex sexual activity.
- A failure to understand persecution maybe simply because they are percieved as being different.
- Poor factual knowledge of life for gay people in some countires.
- "Fast tracked" asylum seekers detained in hostile homophobic environment.
- Too shorter time scale in which to reach a decision.
What particularly takes me aback in this report however are the attitudes expressed by some of the legal representatives. Quotes attributed to "Nicholas" of the UKBA make him seem particularly clueless as to how to approach the subject;
I would look at how they’ve explored their sexuality in a cultural context – reading Oscar Wilde perhaps, films and music.
You would expect that if somebody has been sexually active in their home country they should be willing to discuss those subjects.
Which hardly express much empathy for someone from Northern Nigeria or rural Iran. "Nicholas" certainly sounds like the type of idiot who might ask a question such as "Why do you choose to be homosexual when you know it is illegal in your country?" as has apparently been asked at asylum interviews.
Nicholas aside, UKBA staff come across for the most part as very put upon people with huge case loads, not enough training and a very British inability to discuss matters of sexuality effectively. They are at the mercy of very negative policy against the claimant, and have been chiefly trained in looking for inconsistencies in stories rather that to genuinely investigate, and some even express sympathy for their clients.
Judges come across particularly poorly though, with a series of not only offensive but also downright dangerous view points and judgements based on outmoded understanding of homosexuality.
[If he is asked] Why aren’t you married?’ the judge said, well all he needs to say is, ‘I’m not the marrying kind’. That client is now in Pakistan hiding because he was sent back.
This is despicable, but at least the judge was quite as openly homophobic as Judge Freeman whose behaviour is described below;
In a judgement on the case of a gay Iranian in 2005, Senior Immigration Judge John Freeman made repeated references to the applicant having engaged in ‘buggery’. Judge Freeman also described the applicant’s friends as a ‘côterie’ and their sexual orientation as a ‘predilection’ and a desire to ‘go in for that sort of thing’. He also referred to their ‘unseemly activity’ and ‘homosexual liaisons’
This hardly sounds like the sort of person who ought to be in charge of deciding if anyone, let alone gay or lesbian people, be provided sanctuary in this country. Other outrages offered up by the courts include requests for medical inspections to prove passive homosexuality (such inspections are used as part of the torture in countries such as Syria and Iraq (see below)), a refusal to see that passivity comes with an extra set of cultural taboo (two men in a relationship both claimed to be active and their case was dismissed) and claims scars on a man penis from torture were due to sex (!?!).
The report also touches up the homophobic atmospheres of detention centres, where a majority of gay man can end up due to their case being fast tracked (dealt with in two weeks).
The whole place was vile. It was so homophobic. One of the guards called me a poof and there were Jamaicans who kept hurling abuse at some Iranian guys – calling them batty men. I was terrified thinking oh my God, I hope they don’t know I’m one of them. There were always fights – they would provoke them and the guys would try to fight back. Eventually the gay guys had to be taken out. So it was very scary. It was awful. You can’t risk being open about being gay there.
Report can be found at; http://www.stonewall.org.uk/what_we_do/2583.asp#Asylum
Saturday 23 April 2011
Friday 22 April 2011
Systems of Disgust; The Situation in Iraq.
It is illogical that the holiness of the ideology or belief created by human beings is more holy than human life itself.
In his fascinating book, Unspeakable Love (which I will discuss fully later on), Brian Whitaker puts forward the theory that the clash between liberal and religious attitudes towards sexual freedom is a clash between two ideas of "good." One set of beliefs holding that is "good" and one will arrive at emotional fulfillment by following your own subjective desires, the other that it is "good" and one will achieve fulfillment by following religiously ordained moral principles. However, reading Human Rights Watch's deeply shocking report "They want to Exterminate Us; Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq," I cannot see how any idea of "good" motivates that death squads of Mahdi Army, who track down and murder gay and effeminate men on the streets of Baghdad.
One sentence in particular is especially chilling. Since reading the report in January I have struggled to articulate what the sentence describers when talking about the project, a sense of disgust filling my mouth as I speak.. The sentence reads;
One of the tortures they used on him was a very strong glue to close his anus, after which he was given a laxative causing diarrhea that killed him.
Whilst this is particularly horrible, it is ultimately just another detail in the succession of kidnappings, executions, beatings, rapes and exhortations through which the report creates a sense of a country driving towards what is essentially a gay holocaust. Within the first few paragraphs of the report's body forty men are dead, and every interviewee knows of murdered friends and acquaintances. Anti-gay propaganda in Iraq justifies this as not only a moral, but a cultural, crusade;
The legacy of inherited beliefs regarding manhood and morality that characterize the Iraqi people must be transmitted. These ideals go against the feminization of boys and the practice of [men]
applying makeup, which have spread among many Iraqi youth, eliciting disgust.
I feel disgust when I read of these actions. Systems of good are lost behind systems of disgust, as these two perspectives look across at each other.
The irony is however that the Mahdi army are a very poor representation of the Islamic ideals they claim to be acting on. Shar'ia demands a trial, witnesses, a judge and some legal process even if homophobia lies behind it, and the Mahdi seem to pick and choose what parts of Islamic code they are more or less keen on;
A lot of the Mahdi Army are not there because they are religious. I know militiamen who drink, take drugs, have sex. They are there because their hearts are dead. They can just kill people without thinking twice. They are products of violence and they pass it along. They learned violence from poverty and from the time of Saddam, and it’s all they know.
The army itself grew up in the sectarian violence that mushroomed after the U.S. invasion, yet once the U.S. stepped up their forces to counter the insurrection the army dissolved back into the shadows of Sadr City. This lost them a lot of respect amongst the communities from which they came, and so cooked up this moral crusade is a way to re-establish authority.
The method has however back fired, with a majority of regular Iraqis viewing the murder with humane disgust, and with many families touched by grief following the murder of a relative or son (giving a sense of the scale of the killing).
Though families are not always so sympathetic. In tribal areas there is also the danger of patriarchal honour killing, which can be even more ruthless than the militias. One young man fled to Syria, where he believed himself safe and got a job at a hospital, only to arrive at work to find a gang of uncles waiting for him in the reception area with the intention of carrying him off and murdering him.
Escaping to neighbouring countries, where it is estimated two million Iraqi refugees currently reside, is still a dangerous option. These countries are usually equally dangerous places for LGBT individuals, and harbour homophobic legal practices themselves coupled with powerful state surveillance (as in Syria). The option of joining the 291,000 seeking asylum further a field through the UN is there, but the ability to be truthful as to reasons behind ones case is severely curtailed by local attititudes.
One positive glimmer of hope is the London based group Iraqi LGBT who support individual asylum cases and run safe houses in Iraq. However I recently saw a video interview with the group's founder on the Guardian Website in which he explained the project is currently on hold due to lack of funds.
The plight of Gay Iraqi's is exceptionally desperate, and as such I hope to bring awareness of this through the production.
Full Report; http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/08/17/they-want-us-exterminated-0
Iraqi LGBT website; http://iraqilgbt.org.uk/
Interview with Ali Hilli; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/dec/13/iraqi-gay-rights
In his fascinating book, Unspeakable Love (which I will discuss fully later on), Brian Whitaker puts forward the theory that the clash between liberal and religious attitudes towards sexual freedom is a clash between two ideas of "good." One set of beliefs holding that is "good" and one will arrive at emotional fulfillment by following your own subjective desires, the other that it is "good" and one will achieve fulfillment by following religiously ordained moral principles. However, reading Human Rights Watch's deeply shocking report "They want to Exterminate Us; Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq," I cannot see how any idea of "good" motivates that death squads of Mahdi Army, who track down and murder gay and effeminate men on the streets of Baghdad.
One sentence in particular is especially chilling. Since reading the report in January I have struggled to articulate what the sentence describers when talking about the project, a sense of disgust filling my mouth as I speak.. The sentence reads;
One of the tortures they used on him was a very strong glue to close his anus, after which he was given a laxative causing diarrhea that killed him.
Whilst this is particularly horrible, it is ultimately just another detail in the succession of kidnappings, executions, beatings, rapes and exhortations through which the report creates a sense of a country driving towards what is essentially a gay holocaust. Within the first few paragraphs of the report's body forty men are dead, and every interviewee knows of murdered friends and acquaintances. Anti-gay propaganda in Iraq justifies this as not only a moral, but a cultural, crusade;
The legacy of inherited beliefs regarding manhood and morality that characterize the Iraqi people must be transmitted. These ideals go against the feminization of boys and the practice of [men]
applying makeup, which have spread among many Iraqi youth, eliciting disgust.
I feel disgust when I read of these actions. Systems of good are lost behind systems of disgust, as these two perspectives look across at each other.
The irony is however that the Mahdi army are a very poor representation of the Islamic ideals they claim to be acting on. Shar'ia demands a trial, witnesses, a judge and some legal process even if homophobia lies behind it, and the Mahdi seem to pick and choose what parts of Islamic code they are more or less keen on;
A lot of the Mahdi Army are not there because they are religious. I know militiamen who drink, take drugs, have sex. They are there because their hearts are dead. They can just kill people without thinking twice. They are products of violence and they pass it along. They learned violence from poverty and from the time of Saddam, and it’s all they know.
The army itself grew up in the sectarian violence that mushroomed after the U.S. invasion, yet once the U.S. stepped up their forces to counter the insurrection the army dissolved back into the shadows of Sadr City. This lost them a lot of respect amongst the communities from which they came, and so cooked up this moral crusade is a way to re-establish authority.
The method has however back fired, with a majority of regular Iraqis viewing the murder with humane disgust, and with many families touched by grief following the murder of a relative or son (giving a sense of the scale of the killing).
Though families are not always so sympathetic. In tribal areas there is also the danger of patriarchal honour killing, which can be even more ruthless than the militias. One young man fled to Syria, where he believed himself safe and got a job at a hospital, only to arrive at work to find a gang of uncles waiting for him in the reception area with the intention of carrying him off and murdering him.
Escaping to neighbouring countries, where it is estimated two million Iraqi refugees currently reside, is still a dangerous option. These countries are usually equally dangerous places for LGBT individuals, and harbour homophobic legal practices themselves coupled with powerful state surveillance (as in Syria). The option of joining the 291,000 seeking asylum further a field through the UN is there, but the ability to be truthful as to reasons behind ones case is severely curtailed by local attititudes.
One positive glimmer of hope is the London based group Iraqi LGBT who support individual asylum cases and run safe houses in Iraq. However I recently saw a video interview with the group's founder on the Guardian Website in which he explained the project is currently on hold due to lack of funds.
The plight of Gay Iraqi's is exceptionally desperate, and as such I hope to bring awareness of this through the production.
Full Report; http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/08/17/they-want-us-exterminated-0
Iraqi LGBT website; http://iraqilgbt.org.uk/
Interview with Ali Hilli; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/dec/13/iraqi-gay-rights
Thursday 14 April 2011
The interviews... CAN YOU HELP?
The research process leading up to the production has two strands; library research (that is websites, reports, books, etc) and interviews. The production itself will focus on the interviews, whilst this blog will focus on the library research providing contextual information on the issues raised.
The interviews are being largely brokered by organisations with experience working with asylum seekers and refugees. The interviews will of course be of a highly sensitive nature, as such it is not appropriate for me to write about the experience of collating these interviews here. However I am hopeful that the writing of this blog will attract the attention of organisations and individuals who feel they could either help or offer first hand experience themselves. Below I quote the letter I have written to approach potential interviewees;
"Hearts Unspoken is going to be a new piece of theatre.
It is going to be based on interviews with people who are claiming asylum because they are
gay, and are at risk in their home country.
With Hearts Unspoken we want to tell real stories.
We want to show people what is going on in the world and in the asylum system to gay people.
We want to make a powerful piece of theatre.
Can you help us?
If yes, we would like to hear your story.
If you agree, we may use your story as part of our play, but we will not tell anyone your name
and we will make sure no one knows it is you.
We are Sam Rowe and Rachel Jury. Sam is director and writer and Rachel runs an arts
company call conFAB. We have both worked with asylum seekers and refugees before, and
care a lot about the way people are treated both in the U.K. and around the world.
Hearts Unspoken will be on at The Tron Theatre in Glasgow in September."
If you have story or something to say yourself then please contact me via my e-mail address. Written testimony is just as helpful as an interview.
The interviews are being largely brokered by organisations with experience working with asylum seekers and refugees. The interviews will of course be of a highly sensitive nature, as such it is not appropriate for me to write about the experience of collating these interviews here. However I am hopeful that the writing of this blog will attract the attention of organisations and individuals who feel they could either help or offer first hand experience themselves. Below I quote the letter I have written to approach potential interviewees;
"Hearts Unspoken is going to be a new piece of theatre.
It is going to be based on interviews with people who are claiming asylum because they are
gay, and are at risk in their home country.
With Hearts Unspoken we want to tell real stories.
We want to show people what is going on in the world and in the asylum system to gay people.
We want to make a powerful piece of theatre.
Can you help us?
If yes, we would like to hear your story.
If you agree, we may use your story as part of our play, but we will not tell anyone your name
and we will make sure no one knows it is you.
We are Sam Rowe and Rachel Jury. Sam is director and writer and Rachel runs an arts
company call conFAB. We have both worked with asylum seekers and refugees before, and
care a lot about the way people are treated both in the U.K. and around the world.
Hearts Unspoken will be on at The Tron Theatre in Glasgow in September."
If you have story or something to say yourself then please contact me via my e-mail address. Written testimony is just as helpful as an interview.
Wednesday 13 April 2011
Where this comes from...
Back in 2008 I saw a film; A Jihad for Love by Parvez Sharma. It was a documentary focusing on the lives of gay Muslims around the world. The stories it told were all incredibly powerful, but the section that stayed with me the most was the one which focused on Amir, Payam, Arsham and Mojtaba. They were four gay men who had escaped from repression in Iran and found themselves in central Turkey. There they were seeking asylum through the UN high commissioner in a third safe country (Turkey does not accept asylum claims from Iran).
At one point in the film we are shown images of Amir's back. His skin had been sliced off in ribbons following 100 lashes having been caught by the Iranian authorities at an underground gay party.
Mojtaba had been secretly married to his boyfriend and video had been made, but this tape had been stolen and his life was now in grave danger. The cruel paradox being that the UN now required him to present the video to support his claim. At another point Payam phoned his mother from a pay phone while the others watch from a street corner, a gang of nervous school boys. Weak with grief Payam ended his converstation. "I will be your mother" Says Arsham, camping it up (the aethetisation of pain as Sontag says). "But you're not." replies Payam as he moves off, leaving Arsham to look sadly on at a man who even the comfort of friendship cannot reach. We last see Arsham and Payam cruise down a Canadian highway towards Toronto, marveling at their new world like tourists. Suddenly Arsham breaks down. "I used to think I would never see this day," he chokes, "I used to think, 'How can I be free when so many others can't." I thought of Mojtaba still waiting, his case unresolved, curled up in a sleep bag in a bare room in central Turkey... Let alone the many thousands whose stories had not been heard.
These images and moments struck me deeply, not for only the intensity of their situation, fleeing from such persecution, but also for the beautiful and gentle relationship that had develop between them. As a theatre maker I instantly wanted to tell their story on stage. But how? The film had been made years previously and I certainly didn't have the budget or resources to track these men down. Then it struck me; there are men and women right now in the U.K. seeking asylum on the grounds of homophobic persecution in their home country. They were living in the same city as me, caught in the gargantuan bureaucracy and frustration of our own asylum system. All I had to do was look for them and the stories would be there.
These things are never so easy however, and it has taken over two years of talking about it and gaining further experience as a director before the funding to back the project has been found. For this I would like to thank Rachel Jury of conFAB for sharing in my enthusiasm and the Awards for All Scheme for being our eventual backer. Now the Tron Theatre in Glasgow has given us space, and the 7th September opening night looms from my diary.
This blog will provide two things. It will list, link and share my thoughts on as much of my research materials as possible, providing a data base for anyone with either an interest in the production or the subject matter. And it will document the process of making and developing the production for posterity, my own records and general interest.
I hope that the next twenty-two weeks will be a fascinating experience and result in an important piece of theatre; "Hearts Unspoken."
Film Website; http://www.ajihadforlove.com
At one point in the film we are shown images of Amir's back. His skin had been sliced off in ribbons following 100 lashes having been caught by the Iranian authorities at an underground gay party.
Mojtaba had been secretly married to his boyfriend and video had been made, but this tape had been stolen and his life was now in grave danger. The cruel paradox being that the UN now required him to present the video to support his claim. At another point Payam phoned his mother from a pay phone while the others watch from a street corner, a gang of nervous school boys. Weak with grief Payam ended his converstation. "I will be your mother" Says Arsham, camping it up (the aethetisation of pain as Sontag says). "But you're not." replies Payam as he moves off, leaving Arsham to look sadly on at a man who even the comfort of friendship cannot reach. We last see Arsham and Payam cruise down a Canadian highway towards Toronto, marveling at their new world like tourists. Suddenly Arsham breaks down. "I used to think I would never see this day," he chokes, "I used to think, 'How can I be free when so many others can't." I thought of Mojtaba still waiting, his case unresolved, curled up in a sleep bag in a bare room in central Turkey... Let alone the many thousands whose stories had not been heard.
These images and moments struck me deeply, not for only the intensity of their situation, fleeing from such persecution, but also for the beautiful and gentle relationship that had develop between them. As a theatre maker I instantly wanted to tell their story on stage. But how? The film had been made years previously and I certainly didn't have the budget or resources to track these men down. Then it struck me; there are men and women right now in the U.K. seeking asylum on the grounds of homophobic persecution in their home country. They were living in the same city as me, caught in the gargantuan bureaucracy and frustration of our own asylum system. All I had to do was look for them and the stories would be there.
These things are never so easy however, and it has taken over two years of talking about it and gaining further experience as a director before the funding to back the project has been found. For this I would like to thank Rachel Jury of conFAB for sharing in my enthusiasm and the Awards for All Scheme for being our eventual backer. Now the Tron Theatre in Glasgow has given us space, and the 7th September opening night looms from my diary.
This blog will provide two things. It will list, link and share my thoughts on as much of my research materials as possible, providing a data base for anyone with either an interest in the production or the subject matter. And it will document the process of making and developing the production for posterity, my own records and general interest.
I hope that the next twenty-two weeks will be a fascinating experience and result in an important piece of theatre; "Hearts Unspoken."
Film Website; http://www.ajihadforlove.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)