Gay African Refugees Face Abduction, Violence And Rape in Uganda and Kenya.
guardian.co.uk
African homosexuals who flee persecution in their own countries are abducted, beaten and raped in the places where they seek asylum, a study of Kenya and Uganda has found.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people are among the most vulnerable and isolated of all refugees, according to the report by watchdog Human Rights First (pdf). This is especially true in places where they are at heightened risk owing to violent attacks, discrimination and laws that criminalise same-sex relations.
The US-based non-governmental organisation has called on Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, to help make sure that LGBTI refugees gain access to safety and protection from violence in their countries of asylum.
Human Rights First examined the plight of LGBTI refugees in Kenya and Uganda, two countries where homosexuality is illegal.
Its report The Road to Safety cites examples of violence, including:
• Two refugee women in Uganda who were abducted and raped in 2010 because they had been assisting LGBTI refugees.
• A gay male refugee in Uganda who was locked in his home and a group of refugees tried to burn him alive last November.
• Five cases of “corrective rape” of lesbian or transgender male refugees in Uganda were reported by NGOs between June and November 2011.
•A gay Somali teenager in Kenya who was doused in petrol in 2010 and would have been set on fire by a crowd of Somali teenagers in Eastleigh, Nairobi, if not for the intervention of an older Somali woman.
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