Bisexual asylum seeker has deportation flight cancelled .... appeal for June 17

As we continue to track this story from the UK some good news at least for now has come forth regarding Orashia, Jamaican Orashia Edwards is appealing rejected claim for asylum after tribunal alleged he was ‘experimenting’ and had been dishonest about his sexuality, this has been a concern for many years when I handled some cases at my time at JFLAG and other private ones. I wonder though since bisexuality is not as widely discussed as homosexuality why this challenge presents itself in this case?

The business of credibility is so crucial in asylum matters but one hopes Orashia is truthful or at least he seems so for now.

Orashia has a point on the part of the high publicity this matter has received and he maybe marked if after he is sent back here and local media picks up on it.

Going back to Jamaica would have meant death (Gay Times UK)
Orashia was released from Morton Hall detention centre where he was taken over a month ago. Inside detention he allegedly received death threats because of his sexuality.

He was being held there because an asylum tribunal refused to accept that he was bisexual.
Speaking to the Guardian from dentition, Orashia accused the Home Office of handling his case unjustly. The tribunal rejected his claim that he had been in a relationship with a man in Antigua.

“They said I was lying about my sexuality because I couldn’t remember details of the relationship.”

“I couldn’t tell them his date of birth, all I could remember was his star sign. He wrote a letter confirming that we had been in a relationship, but they refused to believe that we had been more than friends.”

Orashia said he is “relieved to be back home with friends and family and hopes his asylum claim will be granted soon”

The believability factor usually raises its head and non effeminate behaviours are sadly used to profile applicants allegedly by the Home Office as an old case comes to mind where a judge literally told a man he was not 'camp' enough to convince him. Added to that are the dishonest folks who make it bad for persons with genuine appeals as they work the system sometimes aided or urged by dubious solicitors to gain stay in the UK.

The UK's Guardian reported:

Immigration authorities have cancelled the deportation flight of a Jamaican asylum seeker who faced removal from the UK after the Home Office refused to accept he was bisexual.

Orashia Edwards, 34, had been held at Morton Hall immigration removal centre in Lincolnshire after being detained during a scheduled meeting with immigration officials. His family were told he could be deported at any time from 5 May, but Edwards was instead detained for nearly a month before being released pending a further appeal against his rejected claim for refugee status – the latest in a series of prolonged periods in detention.

He has been involved in a protracted battle with the Home Office after an asylum tribunal rejected his application, saying that he had been dishonest about his sexuality. But Edwards criticised the decision, claiming he had been the victim of institutional bias because of his sexuality.

“I think they are prejudiced against bisexual people,” Edwards said. “They say I have choices, that I could choose to be with a woman. Maybe if I had lied and said that I was gay things would have been different, but I’m just being honest. For years I was in denial about my sexuality, it took me so long to be honest with myself – I like men and I like women.”

Edwards’s asylum tribunal also alleged that while he had been sexually active with men, he had been “experimenting” with his orientation and was in fact heterosexual – an argument dismissed by bisexual activists as a common discriminatory trope.

“I’ve been in relationships with men and women since 2003,” Edwards said. “If I had been experimenting then maybe I would have slept with a man once and never gone back, but I’m bisexual, it’s who I am.”

He added that he believed his life would be at risk if he returned to Jamaica, where violence against gay, lesbian and bisexual people is widespread and sexual activity between men remains illegal under the country’s anti-sodomy laws.
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“I won’t survive if I go back,” Edwards said. “The media coverage of my case means that my picture and my story are all over the Jamaican media. Once you are perceived as homosexual or bisexual you are branded for the rest of your life.

“Even while I was in detention, the other Jamaicans there were saying that they could go back, but I couldn’t. It just wouldn’t be possible for me. I think that the Home Office staff are trained to reject anything they’re told. I’ve given them all the proof I can of my sexuality and they still refuse to believe me. I don’t know what more I could do.”

Edwards had submitted intimate pictures of himself with another man to support his case for refugee status, a practice that campaign groups have criticised as an example of endemic mistreatment of LGBT people in the asylum system.

Edwards’s partner, Michael Mardel, echoed his allegation of prejudice on the part of the Home Office and insisted he had not been dishonest about his sexuality. He said: “I’ve known Orashia for over two years, and to put it bluntly there is absolutely a sexual element to our relationship.

“Orashia has stayed the night at my house. He is absolutely not lying about his attraction to men. Our families have also become close, we have a genuine relationship. I think that the Home Office doesn’t understand the concept of bisexuality. They seem to think that you have to be one thing or the other, they don’t seem to accept that you can be attracted to both genders and that it’s not an either/or thing for everybody.”

Edwards’s mother, Vienna Brown, said she was overjoyed at her son’s release, but added that she remained nervous about the eventual outcome of his case. “I got an email from Orashia’s solicitor saying that he was going to be released, but it wasn’t until I heard the knock at the door and opened it and saw him there that I really believed it,” she said.

“I just fell to the ground and thanked God, because I’ve prayed so hard to have my son back with me. I’ve hardly slept since he was detained. I just hope that this will lead to more good news and that he’ll be allowed to stay in this country with his family and his friends.”

Edwards will bring an appeal against the rejection of his asylum claim, on 17 June. The Home Office has previously stated that it does not normally comment on individual asylum cases.

ENDS

1. Sign his petition

2. Watch & share the campaign film

3.  visit Defend Orashia Facebook

LGBT Envoy Wants To Get By With A Little Help From Our Friends

J. Lester Feder

Newly appointed U.S. LGBT rights envoy Randy Berry doesn’t see his primary job as weighing in in countries where LGBT rights are most embattled. Instead, he says he’s targeting “the vast set of countries in the middle” on the question of embracing LGBT rights as a human rights concern.

“If we can do our part to move the center of the universe towards progress on this, that’s something I would like to be able to point to a few years from now,” Berry said in an interview with BuzzFeed News on Friday just before beginning a 15 country swing through Latin America and Europe set to coincide with LGBT Pride Month.

The pace of the trip “kind of makes my stomach hurt,” Berry said. “I’m home long enough to basically take my shirts to the dry cleaner and tuck the kids in.”

Though Berry is working on plans to head to Uganda in July, he is first visiting countries that have made rapid progress on LGBT rights over the past few years to get ideas on what strategies have been most effective. His South American stops include Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, all of which have established marriage equality over the past five years. He’ll also visit Chile, which enacted its first civil partnership law earlier this year, and is also a funder of the Global Equality Fund, a multinational, public-private partnership set up by the United States to support LGBT rights groups around the world.

“A great deal of leadership is coming out of several places in Latin America,” Berry said, adding that he hoped the trip would generate ideas on how to diffuse the attack often made by LGBT rights opponents that the United States is forcing acceptance of homosexuality on the rest of the world.

“We’re not working on a [North] American issue. We’re working on a global issue,” Berry said.

Berry said his last stop in Latin America will be in the Dominican Republic, where the appointment of the out gay Wally Brewster as U.S. ambassador in 2013 was met with a backlash from conservatives and the leaders of the Catholic Church.

Berry next heads to Eastern Europe, including a stop at the continent-wide pride event being held right on Russia’s doorstep in the capital of Latvia, Riga. He will also visiting neighboring Lithuania — which has a law similar to Russia’s ban on “gay propaganda” on the books — Poland, and Finland, which is also a contributor to the Global Equality Fund.

Before returning to the United States, Berry will stop in Amsterdam and London with the goal of recruiting support from business interests to promote LGBT rights, which he described as “one of the pillars” of what he hopes to achieve in the envoy post.

Berry is kicking off his tenure by emphasizing his role as an international emissary, but he has also been charged by Secretary of State John Kerry with coordinating the U.S.’s response to anti-LGBT crackdowns when they occur. Following the passage of sweeping anti-LGBT laws in Nigeria and Uganda in early 2014, Kerry said in an interview with BuzzFeed News that he had called for a comprehensive review of our relations with all countries that have anti-LGBT laws on the books.

That review has been completed, Berry said, including a “process of engaging with embassies and consulates” about the situation on the ground.

When asked about the fact that the U.S. response to LGBT crackdowns has been uneven — introducing some sanctions on Uganda and the Gambia following passage of their anti-LGBT laws, for example, while remaining mostly publicly silent on Nigeria’s anti-LGBT law and Egypt’s growing arrests of people accused of homosexuality — Berry said it would be a mistake to establish a set of measures automatically triggered when governments turn against LGBT people.

“I’m not convinced that you can put a matrix of action together that when you consider them to be violating human rights … because it robs you of the flexibility to engage,” said Berry. “Sometimes you need to take out the sticks,” he said, “but I’m firmly a believer in engagement.”

But he said that it was sometimes a challenge to get the United States to respond swiftly to threats to human rights because foreign policy requires coordinating across a sprawling set of divisions in the State Department and several other federal agencies.

“Any time you’re moving a bureaucracy as big as this one — especially with interagency [cooperation] — it takes some time,” Berry said.

also see:

'We came to listen and talk, not to judge'

RANDY Berry and Todd Larson wanted Jamaicans to have a clear understanding of the reason for their visit to the island last week.

So, in an interview with the Jamaica Observer lasting just under 30 minutes, the US Government officials stated more than once that they were here to listen, to engage America's partners in dialogue on human rights, and that meant the State giving equal treatment to everyone, regardless of their race, class, sexual orientation or beliefs.

"We're not advancing special rights, but talking about the universality... of human rights of everyone," said Larson, the United States Agency for International Development's senior LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex) co-ordinator.

That point was reinforced by Berry, who was just a few weeks ago appointed special envoy for the human rights of the LGBTI community by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Both Berry and Larson sat with the Observer on Friday afternoon, a day after their arrival which sparked protest by some church groups who argued that they were here to force Jamaica to embrace homosexual lifestyle as normal.

"I think it's unfortunately uninformed of what we are here doing," Berry said when asked to respond to the protest.

 Fanatical group Lovemarch protest outside the Pegasus where Berry was in a meeting during his recent visit to Jamaica

"We have been very, very careful -- as the president (Barack Obama) was during his visit and others -- to ensure we are engaging in a spirit of equality within a human rights framework. That is what we are interested in. We are not at all interested in making judgements, in using any other manner than to seek just an honest dialogue."

Berry said that while he was aware of that view regarding his and Larson's visit, he was confident that there wouldn't have been that much controversy if there was an understanding that both men were here "engaging in a human rights framework".