Event: Pride in Solidarity
Larne House photo credit Emmet Thornton
Pride in Solidarity: Protecting LGBT+ People Seeking Asylum from Persecution
Article by Patrick from End Deportations Belfast
Why you should attend the LGBT+ Asylum panel at Pride in Solidarity organised by @BelfastEnd & @hereni Tuesday 8 September 2020 - 7pm - 8:30pm
As LGBT+ residents of Northern Ireland, too many of us know what it’s like to be excluded from society, harassed or bullied because of our identity. That’s why LGBT+ community organisations matter and why so many of us express our Pride for the activists within our chosen LGBT+ family who have agitated for hard-won equal rights; a job that is still underway.
In Northern Ireland, another group need a haven from persecution: LGBT+ people seeking international protection. These are our siblings; at another time and place, we might be them. How we show Pride in Solidarity with our LGBT+ family indicates who we want to be as a community, the friendship and love we have in our hearts to extend. So we should be angry about how LGBT+ people seeking asylum are treated.
Why do LGBT+ people seek asylum?
11 countries threaten the death penalty for LGBT+ sexual activity.
69 countries treat same-sex relations as a criminal act.
LGBT+ people may be persecuted, raped and sexually abused, discriminated against, humiliated and encounter violence by state representatives, neighbours and their own families, usually without recourse to police protection.
Exclusion and violence can happen even where gender identity and sexual orientation are protected characteristics.
(Sources: ILGA; UKLGIG; Irish Refugee Council)
The UK’s ‘Hostile Environment’*
When she was Home Secretary, Theresa May vowed to make the UK “a really hostile environment” for people seeking international protection. That vow made it into policy and the working practices of asylum decision-makers. Between 2016 and 2018, over 3,100 people who had applied for asylum in the UK on the basis of their sexual or gender identity, had their claims refused. (Sources: The Guardian; Liberal Democrats; Home Office figures). *All figures here are for the UK overall as separate NI figures are not available. Figures for the Republic of Ireland do not separate out LGBT+ migrants.
Migrants have to meet an astonishingly high burden of proof to be taken seriously. Which LGBT+ person, in a position of serious risk, maintains records of their sexual relationships or gender experiences which would incriminate them? Yet, decision-makers have created a culture of disbelief, telling one man his ‘demeanour’ was not gay enough, asking another woman ‘how can you be lesbian and Christian?’. The list of horror stories of officialdom is long and punishing.
The UK and Ireland are both signatories to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, which lays out what it means to be a refugee, the rights of displaced persons and the duty of host states. The kind of protection for refugees that a country can offer is called ‘asylum’, which means that you should not be sent back to your ‘home’ country. The person seeking international protection has to convince official decision-makers that they are at risk of serious harm because they are LGBT+ (Source: UKLGIG).
Northern Ireland’s ‘Hostile Environment’
Immigration checks in Belfast are disproportionately high, incredibly nearly FOUR TIMES higher than in London and the third highest rate in the UK overall between 2012-2016 (source: thedetail.tv based on Home Office data). This is astonishing given the comparatively low population of non-Irish/non-British nationalities living in Northern Ireland. Despite a claim from the Home Office that immigration interventions are ‘intelligence-led’, only one third of those targeted went on to be arrested.
Immigration interventions can include checks at homes and workplaces, choke-points like ports and airports as well as land-border checks (bus and train) and can involve UK or Irish immigration teams. Both jurisdictions have been accused of racial profiling, creating a ‘hostile environment’ for commuters, tourists and everyday border-users. This is underlined by the false claims of the British government, who had said there would be no checks in the Common Travel Area (CTA) between the UK and Ireland, which guarantees free movement for Irish and British citizens.
Larne House: Northern Ireland’s Short-Term Holding Centre
Larne House is Northern Ireland’s only asylum detention centre and is run by a company called Mitie, that profits from detaining people seeking international protection. The centre has a capacity of 19, held in cells within the PSNI Larne property. It is ‘short term’, meaning that detainees are held there for up to 7 days. Roughly half are deported or sent on to Immigration Removal Centres in England and Scotland and the remainder released
A Freedom of Information request showed that Larne House does not routinely record or account for the LGBT+ identity of its detainees. This fails to take into account the vulnerability and needs of people who are detained in Larne House, which may include a need for medical or legal advice, social support and counselling support tailored to these individuals on the basis of their LGBT+ status. The nurse who ultimately decides on the health needs of detainees is privately hired by Mitie, the company which profits from a person’s detention, and is therefore separate from the NHS and all of the support and specialisms that offers. Vulnerable people must stay in their rooms as all recreation spaces are shared and may be unsafe. The fleeting stay of most people means that their needs and vulnerabilities are rendered invisible while in Larne House.
Who is Missing?
Numbers fail to tell us about:
LGBT+ People afraid to talk about their sexual or gender identity with an official
Fear of talking about or reliving very personal sexual assault, abuse and violence.
People unaware that they have rights because of their LGBT+ identity.
People who don’t recognise the language and frame of ‘LGBT+’, particularly from non-Western countries with ‘third gender’ and gender non-conforming cultures.
A culture of procedural unfairness in the application and deportation systems
Many people seeking asylum face physical and mental health challenges due to their persecution and the vagaries of the asylum process
LGBT+ people seeking international protection say they face double isolation: as a migrant and as LGBT+
Aren’t LGBT+ rights getting better?
Yes, in many countries, human rights, laws and attitudes have changed. BUT progression can and has slipped back.
Poland and Hungary have seen LGBT+ rights eroded over the past 5 years with no or ineffectual sanctions or interventions from the EU, which sees LGBT+ rights as a core value.
USA has banned transgender people from military service
UK may ditch plans for transgender people to self-identify.
UK Government has revealed plans to ‘make faster decisions’ by forcing people seeking asylum to present all their facts ‘up front’. LGBT+ people may be slower to trust that they can disclose personal information this way.
End Deportations Belfast supports Alternatives to Detention (ATD), which are any legislation, policy or practice, formal or informal, that ensures people are not detained for reasons relating to their migration status, e.g., community-based alternatives for LGBT+ people seeking international protection in Northern Ireland. You can help change language and minds by supporting alternatives to detention and ending the invisibility of LGBT+ people detained at Larne House.
How can we participate in Pride in Solidarity?
Attend the LGBT+ Asylum panel at Pride in Solidarity organisated by @BelfastEnd & @hereni on Tuesday 8 September 2020 - 7pm - 8:30pm
Support the work of Pride in Solidarity by liking and sharing this page:- you can find out more there about the LGBT+ Asylum events taking place from 7-13 September, 2020.
Follow End Deportations on Twitter at @BelfastEnd and Facebook