To attend a panel discussion on UK asylum and be told the "Director of Asylum for the UKBA" is on the panel, is bit like attending a discussion on Good and Evil to discover Satan is on the panel; the dark heart of the matter is sat there in front of you. On standing Bill Brandon corrects his introduction and explains he is merely the deputy director, so we are really in the presence of Mephistopheles, but his seductive, reasoned words still trick me along for a while. The event is "LGBT Asylum; In conversation with the UK boarder agency" held in the lofty beige and golden sanctum of Mishcon De Raye (what mysterious sounding words they are), a very posh legal firm in Holborn (the soap in the bathroom has a little information tag on who designed it).
Sitting there at the table like a bull frog, he looks like a man bolstering himself with arrogance in preparation for incoming attack, but when he stands he speaks with an affable, burble of a sensible man just trying to do the right thing.
All UKBA workers are aware of the seriousness of there decisions he tells us, and if their decisions are poor it is not from any Malice [my friends]. And since the supreme court ruling, the government and reports by the UKLGIG and Stonewall have applied just a little pressure recently the UKBA is realising the error of its ways on LGBT asylum claims, and has spent the last year (for it has only been a year since the practice of deportation on the advice of living with "tolerable discretion" has been discredited) changing it's whole way of thinking on the issue. Well, how forward thinking and pro-active the UKBA are!
A new test, created with allegiance with Stonewall, is now being applied; a more sensitive test to ascertain whether people are indeed homosexual, and training is in place to ensure stereotyping attitudes are overcome. However the journey is just beginning. More country of origin information needs to be gathered, and better records management of LGBT asylum claims. And yes, the Croyden reception center is extremely unpleasant and it is a huge ask to make[/force] people to explain their full story in front of a total stranger in such an environment. BUT we are trying, he tells us, and we must create more understanding between us (referring to the legal practice and activists who make up the audience). Well all that sounds jolly good then. An LGBT asylum seekers in ten to fifteen years time can maybe even expect an excellent level of service. What a shame about all the ones before.
The next speaker is from an organisation called Elop, a mental health charity that often helps deeply distressed asylum seekers. She tells us stories that are depressingly familiar to me now; parental abuse, torture, burnings and murders. And here the difficult paradox begins to reveal itself of the legal service/UKBA process against the raw, unmanageable reality of peoples lives. Brandon had talked of seeking "robust" processes; fair in their even application but utterly inflexible. The academic at SOAS had pointed out how description, mapping and catgorisation failed to truly reflect humanity as it quickly became to solid. Here the solidity of a process takes on a more deadly urgency; how can a fixed legal process accommodate the vast range of suffering and unpredictable human experience it is expected to deal with.
As a layman you realise that the legal world has no room for simple empathy or the benefit of the doubt. Everything must be evidenced and be streamed through official process; de jure over de facto. In the introduction to the evening a lawyer from the firm spoke about receiving a request to sign the petition for Betty Tibakawa, but thought better of it because she herself had not seen the evidence (http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-the-deportation-of-betty-tibakawa-home-office-ref/sign.html). The need for officialdom become extremely problematic when dealing with the Country of Origin reports. Brandon tells us that there is a body of thirty researchers responsible for creating these documents, yet as Jide for House of Rainbow (who is also in attendance) points out, the knowledge of evidence as to how gay people are treated around the world can be found very easily through testimony of country men, through websites and multiple other sources. The need for information only to be accessed thorough a single document from a single official body with no first hand experience and to define the LGBT experience as common amongst all LGBT people living in that country, is doomed to fail those whose cases it should support.
The next significant speaker is from Stonewall, and I am surprised by how negatively she is received by activists, and she reveals them to be a far from radical body. Questioning needs to shift (and has) from focusing on homosexuality being something you do, to something you are, she explains. She makes a nice example of the fact that as a virginal teenager she was still just as gay as she is as an adult with a same-sex partner and a major role in an LGBT organisation, but how would that have been assessed. This is what riles the activists amongst the audience. Why should their sexuality be assessed at all? It should be given the benefit of the doubt that people are, and then it is the risk to their person that should be assessed. Brandon is begin to bristle by this point of the of the Q&A session (I'm jumping about in the chronology of events here), "Well if we give LGBT people the benefit of the doubt, why not torture victims and people who have been trafficked?" He scoffs, and he begins to look increasingly repellent. WELL WHY THE HELL NOT? These humiliating and degrading processes are by in large irrelevant, when surely the question of what happened is less important that what would happen if people were returned. If a claimant is lying, one audience member says, this will gradually make itself obvious over the course of the legal process rather than the process beginning on the assumtion that the claiment is lying. After all, he goes on to point out, other EU countries do give the benefit of the doubt to LGBT claimants. Brandon response telling us that isn't true in Hungary.
Brandon becomes increasingly defensive over the course of the Q&A session, his head turning bright red, at one point he erupts into anger that all the questions are being addressed to him. "Can you explain,"
asks one man, "why during my asylum claim interview my phone was taken from me, and I had my text messages read to see if any were from guys I had been sleeping with?"
"That shouldn't have happened," he snaps, "If it did happen, which I'm not saying it didn't. I'm not commenting"
Questions keep coming at him; why was my client asked when was the first time you committed "buggery," what do you have to say about the Cardiff whistleblowing scandal (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/8496759.stm), and the to top it off a woman asks how tabs are kept on the future of returned asylum seekers because she is in contact with a Lesbian lady from Nigeria who has been beaten and hounded from every place she has tried to settle.
Brandon's response is beyond belief "We do not return people to places where they are in danger... or at least we try not... no we don't keep tabs... if you know something then it's up to you to tell us." The writing of this comment can hardly convey the level of distain that lay behind it, there was no mention of the process of how this lady was meant to tell the UKBA of her contacts fate.
Maybe, from Brandon's earlier talk, the UKBA is trying to change it's attitudes, but this still seems theoretical as a culture amongst its ground corps still appears to exist of deep hostility to claimants; jobs-worths with a little Englander attitude and a driving philosophy of "we don't want you here in this country." I think Brandon expected to be celebrated at this meeting, but his clear responses to the questions posed revealed the UKBA to either be out of control of its staff, or deliberately blind to their behavior, or both.
"Fundamentally, there needs to be a change in international attitudes on sexuality." Said the woman from Stonewall. I wrote this down in capitals in my book as it was forming the core philosophy of my outlook on the issue, but in witnessing the speed at which Brandon jumped on this as an easy way out of dealing with questions related to the immediate safety of claimants made me realise it was just that... an easy way out, Utopian and academic. This relentlessly intense evening gave made me feel suddenly very small in the face of the issue. I felt jittery as I left the hall, and missed my tube interchange as I was so lost in thought. There is a new anger and a new energy behind what I am doing now. With just a few interviews left to do I cannot wait to begin the creation of this piece.
