A Ugandan refugee managed to delay his deportation, yesterday – by refusing to board the plane.
Jamal Ali Said – who is HIV positive, claims he's gay and has resided in the UK for fifteen years – was due to be sent back to his homeland at 7pm yesterday on Kenya Airlines Flight KQ101 to Nairobi, for onward transfer to Entebbe.
But he refused to comply with security officials last night and remains in the UK.
He says he is at serious risk of persecution - potentially murder - and is need of urgent solidarity. His plight has surfaced less than two weeks after Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato was brutally murdered, following a media campaign urging Ugandans to kill gay people.
Speaking from Campsfield detention
centre in Oxfordshire, Said told The Guardian that he was "very frightened" based on "how
they treat you in Uganda if you have HIV, if you are a gay man."
His case echoes that of Brenda Namigadde, who was recently given a reprieve while waiting on a plane which was to deport her.
According to Said's legal representative, his application for protection was refused before last year's landmark Supreme Court ruling, which said that queer asylum seekers should be granted refugee status if going home would result in them being forced to conceal their sexuality.
Following that judgement, Said's solicitor submitted fresh representations to the Home Secretary in November, asking her to review the decision and consider it line with the Supreme Court ruling, but this was declined.
Homosexuality is punishable by up to 14 years in prison in Uganda, but a
bill pending in parliament would impose the death penalty on people
with HIV who have sex.
He is now being held in Brook House Immigration Centre, near Heathrow, while awaiting new deportation details from the UK Border Agency.
