Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
A 30-year-old gay Ugandan refugee named Daniel, displaced specifically due to anti-LGBTI persecution, is one of the first refugees resettled to the US in recognition of that fact. U.S.-based evangelical movements assisted in Daniel’s persecution in Uganda. An article in the Contra Costa Times has the story:
OAKLAND — Being gay in Uganda was never easy for gospel singer Daniel Dyson, but the anti-gay hysteria that erupted in the African nation two years ago forced him to flee.
Prominent Christian pastors had launched a political movement to eliminate homosexuality in the country. They employed professed ex-gays to reveal the names, whereabouts and other identifying details of gay residents in Kampala, the capital city. Dyson was on the list…
...Dyson, who landed in the Bay Area in the spring, is among the first refugees the United States has invited to live in California specifically because of anti-gay persecution abroad. The nonprofit groups that helped him move here — Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay and the San Francisco-based Organization for Refuge Asylum and Migration — are among the first in the country to take sexual orientation into account in the way they integrate refugees into a new community, aware that the ethnic communities and extended families most refugees rely on for support won’t necessarily accommodate them…
…”They were saying that we were destroying African culture, so I went to the media houses, trying to educate people that gay people, we are African people, we are here,” he said.
He had been involved in low-profile lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activism for more than five years, but the barrage of venom grew in 2009. On his way back from a radio station that spring, armed men kidnapped and brutally assaulted Dyson, he said, leaving injuries from which he is still recovering. He fled across the Kenyan border several days later…
…Uganda is debating whether to imprison gays and execute those with “aggravated homosexuality” offenses. The lawmaker who proposed the bill and other Ugandan anti-gay activists have close ties to U.S.-based evangelical movements, though many American pastors have since distanced themselves from the bill and its proponents.
As more countries threaten to penalize homosexuality with jail or death, the United States and United Nations are breaking down some of the institutional barriers that prevent many gays, lesbians and transgender people from seeking refuge. Most of those awarded refugee status belong to a political, ethnic or religious groups and are in danger in their homeland and have no place to live safely. LGBT status also can be considered a social class in countries where gays and lesbians have a well-founded fear of persecution.
“It hasn’t been a legal obstacle in a long time, but there have been enormous systemic obstacles,” said Neil Grungras, director of the nonprofit Organization for Refuge Asylum and Migration. “Few people, extremely few people, said this is the reason I’m being persecuted. We’re trying to make the system more open, less blocked.”…
…”I don’t know what it’s like for him every day. He carries a lot of pain around. Those scars just never really go away,” Grungras said… Read more here
