South Korean gay conscript wins asylum in Canada

From Yonhap News Agency

Canada awarded a South Korean man refugee status after he objected to the mandatory military service in his home country for being a pacifist and a homosexual, a local human rights group said Thursday.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) granted the status in July 2009 to Kim Kyung-hwan, 31, saying the gay conscript is highly likely to face abuse and mistreatment back home, according to the Center for Military Human Rights in Korea, which brought the story to light two years after the fact.

In South Korea, all able-bodied South Korean young men are required by law to serve nearly two-year compulsory military service.

There have been many “conscientious objectors to military service” who chose to serve prison terms instead of entering the military against their political and religious beliefs. But Kim’s case marks the first time in the country that a man seeks shelter in a foreign country after rejecting military conscription due to his homosexuality, according to the rights group.

“Circumstances facing general South Korean conscripts, especially homosexual ones, are very worrisome,” the group quoted IRB as saying. “The applicant should serve in the military, if sent back to his own country, and he is highly likely to face abuses there.”

Delivering the approval, IRB quoted some research results that said Korea conscripts frequently fall victim to cruel treatment and harsh punishment, according to the human rights group. About 30-40 percent of draftees suffer physical punishment and nearly 60 percent of conscript deaths are suicides, it also noted.

“If a homosexual is expelled due to his sexual identity, he probably cannot enter into the public sphere such as employment or schools,” it said.
Faced with a call to join the military, Kim, a student of a prestigious private university in South Korea, applied for the refugee status in Canada in 2006.

After receiving permanent resident status in the country, Kim has settled down there and is now juggling an academic course and a job, the human rights group said.

“Since I was little, I couldn’t sympathize with the military and war at all,” Kim said. “I have no regrets (about leaving South Korea) as I had great worries about possible human rights abuses I could have suffered as a homosexual.”

Story of a gay Ghanaian man

From Ghanaweb, by Paula Stromberg

Imagine if your family published a newspaper story saying you were evil, and that the story made some neighbours feel obligated to smash your skull with rocks. There are thousands of stories like this in Africa. This one is horrific but has a happy ending.

We know there’s a crisis facing lesbian, gay and transgender people around the globe.

Homosexuality is criminal in about 77 countries, including five with the death penalty, and numbers are growing. Particularly in Africa, queer people are being terrorized into the closet, prison cells or the club-wielding hands of lynch mobs. Many religious groups exacerbate this terror to mobilize against wicked Western morals and the ‘previously unknown’ foreign import – homosexuality.

Laws against homosexuality did not exist in Africa until the late 19th Century under British colonization. Nowadays, African leaders who promote gay hatred maintain the colonialist mentality. Governments cracked down on homosexuals as a way to unite Christians and Muslims in Africa.

This could seem comical, except that modern queer Africans are fleeing homelands where they’ve been imprisoned, blackmailed or tortured because of their sexuality or gender identity. Many are physically or sexually assaulted by police or religious officials.

In 2011, the Canadian Government amended the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other legislation claimed to improve Canada’s asylum system for refugees.

Vancouver lawyer Rob Hughes, well-known for representing gay and lesbian refugees over the past 20 years, says Canadian law allows refugee protection for those who can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution. They must also prove they cannot be safe in another part of their country and that their own state government is unable or unwilling to protect them.

In Vancouver, Hughes represented newcomer Sombede Korak at a refugee hearing in 2011. Korak is a gay man who recently fled West Africa. He’s from Ghana’s second largest city, Kumasi, in the centre of the country’s Ashanti Region.

Korak’s story Although Korak is now safely in Canada, he prefers to remain anonymous and his name here is a pseudonym. This is his story.

Kumasi is the capital of Ghana’s kente cloth and gold-producing Ashanti Region. Much of Ghana’s wealth and many of its leaders come from this area. The Ashanti ethnic group is estimated to comprise 19 percent of the population, making it the largest cultural group in Ghana.

As a young Ashanti boy, Korak knew he was different. One day, after he wore his sister’s clothes on the street, his father beat him so severely it took several weeks to recover.

His adolescence was difficult, but at age 20, he met his first boyfriend. “We stole time together,” says Korak in an interview in Vancouver.

“That same year, 2001, a male relative demanded that I date a woman and have sex to prove I was a man, not a homosexual. My family forced me into a heterosexual relationship. ”

Because his 18-year-old girlfriend insisted they live together after she had twins, Korak rented two rooms. He attended the Catholic Church, hoping a Christian god might trump African traditions. “Secretly I kept seeing my boyfriend,” said Korak. His traditionalist family was happy he sired children, but after a couple of years, one of the twins died.

“Twins are a good omen, so according to Ashanti tradition, I had to perform a ceremony to make the dead child’s spirit return in the next baby. Our Ashanti religion, a mix of spiritual and supernatural powers, includes ancestor worship. Shaming the ancestors is an unforgivable sin,” he explains.

By 2008, he and his girlfriend produced another child. “Everyone agreed the baby had the same face and spirit as one that died,” he says. “Spiritual beliefs, customary practices and fetish rituals are part of everyday life in Ghana. ”

Korak was rarely home with the babies and their mother. He had a successful business and claimed his trading operation kept him absent, but all along, between 2000 and 2009, he and his boyfriend continued their relationship.

“One afternoon, my boyfriend and I were at a hotel that rented rooms by the hour. Suddenly, my boyfriend’s family broke the door and barged into the room, catching us in bed. The mother and sisters screamed and made a loud scene. There was lots of shouting.”

“I ran away. Later, I tried to call my boyfriend several times, but his mobile phone was dead. That was the last time we saw each other. We’d been together nine years. ” Of course, the boyfriend’s family made sure Korak’s relatives found out he’d been caught red-handed as a homosexual.

“Oh, it was bad. In reaction, my family ordered I go to an Ashanti bush shrine to be cleansed of evil spirits. I tried to remind them I was Roman Catholic, but it did not help. They insisted I go for the shrine ritual. ”

Exorcism It is important to note these cleansing rituals are not confined just to African traditionalist religions. For the past several years in Ghana, the fastest growing evangelical and other Christian churches embrace the notion of the Devil, spirit possession and witch demonology. African leaders know that a church without exorcism or so-called deliverance sessions means empty pews.

“A different religion like being Roman Catholic made no difference,” he says. “My family insisted I be cleansed. The shrine priest would perform painful rituals to drive out the Devil and make me straight. ”

When I show Korak my photos of an Ashanti shrine 20 kilometres outside Kumasi, he shakes his head, saying that a painted shrine, a town shrine, does not hold the horror of a bush shrine.

“You have to pay money to be beaten. The priest takes you far into the bush, chains you to a large rock at the shrine, throws stones and clubs you. They would shave my head and poison me – or likely kill me in the bush shrine. Acid could be forced down my throat as part of cleansing the evil, being homosexual. Because I broke a serious taboo, they could treat me the same as a witch.”

“When people die in a bush shrine there is rarely a police investigation or autopsy,” he says. Rather than undergo a cleansing ritual that was likely to kill him, Korak ran away. His family searched for him. Relatives gave a story to Ghana’s National Democrat newspaper, announcing they were hunting him for a cleansing ceremony.

The article was as good as signing a death warrant. Ashanti beliefs – that being homosexuality shamed the ancestors – meant anyone could beat him to death on sight. He was known to have an evil spirit. Some religions teach some Africans that killing a homosexual is like beating the Devil.

Realizing he could not stay hidden in Ghana, Korak applied for a visa and came to Canada as a tourist. In Vancouver, the LGBT activist group, the Rainbow Refugee Committee, helped him make an application to be accepted in Canada.

Korak must keep details of his Canadian refugee claim private for his own safety and to protect those Ghanaians who helped him, but he does reveal that after he’d arrived in Canada, a Kumasi friend mailed him a copy of the newspaper story about his family’s hunt. In a strange twist, the news story’s open invitation to violently cleanse the devil saved his life.

Rob Hughes explains: “The Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board member who heard the case said she ruled in favour because of the proven death threat [Korak] faced at home. The newspaper clipping corroborated details given earlier in the refugee application about the danger he faced. ”

Fear Despite being safely in Vancouver, Korak is still in the closet. Old beliefs die hard. He is afraid of being discovered as a homosexual by fellow Ghanaians at his Vancouver church. In a strange new land, he needs continued contact with his own culture. However, many newcomers are still socially conservative. Many still hate gays as a God-given right. He does not feel safe.

Perhaps this can be a reminder for us. Hatred and exorcisms are not confined to African traditional religions. With rapid growth of Pentecostal, charismatic and evangelical churches on that continent, they are harnessing Africans’ fear of witchcraft and supernatural powers. Both religions and governments gain power by demonizing gays and lesbians, denouncing low Western morals. It is cheaper for African governments to look engaged by passing anti-gay laws than to deliver clean water, sewage systems or education.

Media reports such as The Rachel Maddow Show document US fundamentalist churches that finance African pastors who preach against gay rights and women’s rights. African congregations see their hate-speaking pastors quoted internationally by conservative media outlets, getting publicity for outlandish pronouncements that North American pastors would be laughed at or arrested for here – and thus attracting US dollars. African pastors who say the right thing become rich and famous with American Christian help.

American money shaping African morals and African souls – another colonization of the spirit.

Meanwhile, rising immigration from conservative nations into Canada and all of North America and Europe is creating new pressures. Local fundamentalists promote homosexual hatred with evangelical fervor. For Canadian queer people, protecting the right to live safely, be treated with dignity, overcome internalized homophobia, come out and fight back against hate-mongering religious messages must remain a never-ending process.

Human rights workers and queer activists need our continued support both in Canada and around the world.

Experience of transgender El Salvadorian immigrant

From Washington Post, by Teresa Tomassoni

After a gang member held him at gunpoint inside his home, the 24-year-old gay man knew he had to flee El Salvador to survive. He had been beaten and harassed repeatedly on the streets by gang members. Eventually, they warned, they would kill him.

It took two attempts to get across the U.S.-Mexican border, but in 2006, he was smuggled into Arizona and made his way to Washington, where his brother lived.

“Finally, I can have my real life, exactly how I am,” he thought.

Valerie Villalta, now 30, found that new life as a transgender woman and, in the process, won a kind of protection she didn’t even know was possible for someone like her: asylum.

Asylum, which allows an immigrant to live and work in the country legally, is more commonly associated with immigrants who have been persecuted in their home countries — or who might be in the future — because of their politics, race, religion or ethnicity. But Villalta learned that it also can apply to gay and transgender immigrants who have been tortured because of their sexuality.

Since winning her asylum case in 2009 with the help of the Whitman-Walker Health clinic in the District, Villalta has dedicated much of her life to providing guidance to gay and transgender Latino immigrants who find themselves in a foreign land with little or no knowledge of the language, the culture or the services that can help them find peace with who they really are.

She volunteers with a health education program for gay and transgender youths called Empoderate, or “Empower yourself” — the same program that helped her find her way. The youth center is just a few blocks from its umbrella organization, La Clinica del Pueblo, a bilingual community health center in Columbia Heights.

“When you try to help other people, you feel good,” Villalta said recently, sitting in the center’s coral pink Girls Meeting Room. A drawing of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon hangs above her head. “Soy mujer trans (I’m a transgender woman),” it says.

In many ways, Villalta is that butterfly.

At least twice a week when Villalta was growing up, the boy’s father and brothers beat him with a belt or branch for looking effeminate and playing with dolls. Before the age of 12, Villalta was raped by older neighborhood boys.

The abuse continued, and after high school, Villalta left the family’s small home town for San Salvador, the nation’s capital. The young man let his hair grow and began wearing makeup and women’s clothes. Villalta also enrolled in a two-year culinary arts program.

But the school was in a notoriously dangerous area ruled by members of the gang MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha. During an asylum hearing, Villalta later recalled carrying a cooking knife for self-defense as gang members shouted gay slurs and robbed, beat and threatened to kill Villalta.

There was good reason to be fearful. An openly gay co-worker was fatally shot by gang members, and a friend who was a transgender prostitute was killed by gangs.

Villalta arrived in Washington unable to speak English and without legal documents to work. And Villalta was kicked out of a brother’s apartment for being gay.

A friend from the street introduced Villalta to La Clinica del Pueblo, the District’s largest Latino-focused HIV/AIDS services provider. There, Villalta found a safe space to become the woman she believes she was meant to be. Villalta legally changed her name last year.

In 2009, the staff at Empoderate referred Villalta to Whitman-Walker Health to obtain prescription drugs to begin the physical transition to womanhood. There, Villalta also learned that she might be eligible to apply for asylum.

Like Villalta, many immigrants who have suffered because of their sexual orientation don’t know that asylum is an option, said Anna Priddy, a staff attorney at the clinic.

More than 60 transgender people have been counseled about asylum issues at the health center in the past four years. Many of the immigrants are afraid to open up about their sexuality when they arrive, which can make obtaining legal status more challenging, Priddy said.

Typically, asylum applications have to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security within a year of entering the United States. But most of Priddy’s clients have had to seek an exception.

A dozen of the cases, including Villalta’s, have been successful, making them eligible to apply for permanent residency and U.S. citizenship, Priddy said.

Villalta has become an admired leader among young transgender and gay Latinos in the city, said Empoderate’s youth program manager, Manuel Ramirez.

“Transitioning requires a lot of courage,” Ramirez said. “It’s easier to please society.” In many Central and South American countries, there is a strong “machismo” culture and clearly defined male and female roles, he said.

Almost every multicolored wall of the youth center is decorated with photos of Villalta, a striking, model-like figure. She is shown dressed in costumes made of condoms for an HIV/AIDS awareness event and wearing a sparkling crown after being elected “Miss Empowerment” by her peers in 2009.

She gets calls in the middle of the night from young people seeking consolation after finding out that they’re HIV positive, and she takes the lead in demonstrating how to safely inject hormones during workshops at the center.

Villalta also has helped connect the Latino immigrants at the center to Washington’s broader transgender community, a tightknit group that has mobilized in recent months to draw attention to violence against transgender women. Since the summer, at least 20 transgender women have been attacked in the District, said Jason Terry, a volunteer from the DC Trans Coalition, a grass-roots community organization.

In a memo released Dec. 6, President Obama denounced violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people around the world. He commanded U.S. government agencies to step up efforts to protect victims of such violence, particularly those seeking asylum.

These days, Villalta works as a chef at the renowned French-American fusion restaurant Central Michel Richard, on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, where she can be found dishing up carefully prepared hanger steaks, walnut-crusted salmon and more.

“I feel happy when people say, ‘Oh, my goodness, that was so delicious,’ ” Villalta said.

The bedroom she sublets near Howard University is adorned with pictures of her boyfriend of three years and the Barbies she wasn’t allowed to have when she was a boy. There are rows of carefully aligned Mary Kay cosmetics and two miniature American flags. The only indication of her previous life is an 8¹ / ₂-by-11 photo of Villalta as a 24-year-old gay man in 2006, a month before leaving El Salvador.

“It’s very important to me to have something to show how much I change, how I was then and how I am now,” she said.