A gay Ugandan asylum seeker will be spending Christmas in the notoriously homophobic state if the UK Borders Agency has its way. Felix Wamala, who has lived in the UK since 1995, is currently in a detention centre at Gatwick airport awaiting deportation on December the 24th.
Felix now 40, says he was tortured in Uganda for his sexual orientation and fears for his life if he returns. He has recently come out to his family in preparation for his imminent return and says that some were “not pleased” at the news. His partner lives in Venezuela and is not openly gay, as a result of which they have had no contact for four months. Yet the Borders Agency refuses to accept that he is gay.
Previous admissions for asylum have been unsuccessful. The first refusal was sent to the wrong address in 1997. In 2006, a Fast Tier Appeal against refusal on the grounds of human rights was rejected, but Felix says he never made any such appeal and it was held in his absence and without his knowledge. After another asylum rejection, in 2010, his file was lost and the Home Office were unaware of whether he was from Uganda or Kenya. He has been detained since 2010, since when the law has changed so the UK Borders Agency cannot return LGBT asylum seekers to their country of origin if they are likely to suffer abuse from the state. This would certainly be the case in Uganda, where the death penalty was recently proposed for gay men and gay rights activist David Kato was recently murdered.
To protest against the deportation and ask for Felix’s case to be reconsidered, cut and paste the text below and email it to public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk and copy in your local MP.
I am writing to ask that you stop the proposed deportation of Felix Wamala.
Felix is a gay Ugandan who is due to be deported on the 24th of December, following the rejection of his most recent submission. He has lived here since 1995 and claims he was tortured in Uganda before that on the grounds of his sexual orientation. He accepts that the first refusal of his application was in 1997 but he was not at the address to which it was sent.
He also claims that his files were lost in 2010 so The Borders Agency is unsure whether he is Ugandan or Kenyan, and that the reason for refusing his application is that they don’t find his claim to be gay credible.
Please can you stop the proposed deportation and investigate the case?