Organised by Kent Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers, supported by Legal Action for Women

Chair Diane Abbott MP

Speakers:
Begum X, Begum X Must Stay Campaign!
Cristel Amiss, Black Women’s Rape Action Project
Debora Singer, Refugee Women’s Resource Project at Asylum Aid
Farhat Khan, Farhat and Family Must Stay!                                                          
Hanna Siddiqui, Southall Black Sisters
Irene Manzila, All African Women’s Group
Samina Altaf, Samina Will Stay Campaign!

In the week preceding International Women’s Day an invitation is issued to MPs to hear from an all women’s platform. Asylum seeking women from Africa, India and Pakistan will speak about their experiences and their campaign to remain in the UK. Women from grassroots and voluntary sector organisations in various capacities will call for international protection for survivors of rape, forced marriage and other violence.

Fifty percent of the world’s refugees are girls and women according to UNCHR, yet women asylum seekers are barely visible as regards a media and public profile. This means that their very particular needs in terms of health, welfare and childcare issues are not met. In rape and domestic violence cases the threshold for proof is excessively high. Women have to prove not only that they have been violated but also that they cannot access protection from the state and relocate to a different area in their country of origin. When less than six percent of women in the UK can expect to achieve a conviction for rape, what chance have women where the authorities are openly hostile?

Women with compelling cases for asylum are refused because the Home Office say they do not meet the criteria for persecution under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Campaigners argue that the true sense of the convention is being distorted by a rigid interpretation of the law that does not recognise gender issues. In fact the Home Office frequently ignore their own gender guidelines.

Instead of providing a sanctuary for women who have been abused the Government treats many as criminals. Highly traumatised women are imprisoned in Yarlswood Removal Centre. An investigation into Yarl’s Wood by Legal Action for Women (A “Bleak House” for Our Times) found that seventy percent of the women surveyed were survivors of rape and other sexual violence.  These vulnerable women detainees reported racism from staff and sexual intimidation from the guards. They claimed not to have received appropriate medical attention and six tried to commit suicide.

No wonder women in Yarl’s Wood resorted to hunger strike in 2005 as their only means of protesting these appalling conditions. Others refusing to be starved in to “voluntary return” when all their support has been terminated have formed anti- deportation campaigns within their communities. They would rather fight for a life in the UK at great personal cost than acquiesce to returning to a violent situation which may result in their death. Every woman seeking refuge whether from an individual situation of domestic violence or a war zone counts as a valuable human being. So how can our government justify treating them as less than human by imposing a system of such brutality?

This meeting gives a voice to the women who refuse to “go quietly” and will hopefully provide a way forward for collective action.

Biographies of the Women Campaigning to Stay in the UK

Begum X
Begum X fled the violence of rape and forced marriage in India more than three years ago. She has settled in the UK where she is a much valued volunteer for Kent Refugee Action Network. She is a student at Canterbury College and her long term is goal is to become a nurse. Despite evidence from an eminent social anthropologist that return to India would be very unsafe the Home Office say she can relocate. Her MP Gwyn Prosser supports her campaign and seven additional MPs have made representations to the Minister for Immigration Tony McNulty on her behalf.

Samina Altaf
Samina Altaf and her two children, Asqua and Sumamu fled Pakistan after domestic abuse. All three suffer from rickets and are receiving medical support in this country. Nonetheless the Home Office want to deport the family. Also the National Asylum Support Service wants to evict them from their house in Salford on the grounds that they are not prepared to return “voluntarily” to Pakistan.
Samina does not appeal for support because of her condition. Rather she asks for solidarity because she is fighting against the racism of immigration controls

Farhat Khan
Farhat Khan left the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan with her five children and claimed asylum in 2000. She was escaping a violent and abusive marriage and wanted to protect her two younger daughters then aged five and seven from forced marriages which had been arranged by her husband. Her claim was refused but she has just heard that she has had a fresh application accepted, supported by her MP Graham Stringer. Farhat was invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2004 in recognition of her impressive community advice work.

Irene Manzila
Irene Manzila fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo after suffering violence and death threats from the military. Like many of her colleagues in the All African women’s Group (AAWG) on whose behalf she speaks, Ms Manzila’s asylum claim was closed when her account of rape was dismissed in part because of negligent legal representation, and with no support or housing she is dependent on the kindness of friends and relatives for her daily survival. But despite the hardship she faces, Ms Manzila has spearheaded AAWG’s work with women in Yarl’s Wood. Ms Manzila is now making a fresh claim as Women Against Rape were able to find a new lawyer to act for her.

For more information contact Kate Adams, Kent Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers
01227 266 858, 07940964551, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Please note this as an open meeting with no need to pre book. Everyone is welcome.

 Sakia was a 15 year old charismatic and dynamic young woman who was out and proud about being an ‘aggressive‘ ’ according to the GLAAD web-site, a homosexual woman color who dresses in masculine attire but does not necessarily identify as either lesbian or female-to-male transgender. Many of these young women mimic the esthetics of male rappers that are seen on the popular television programs for young urban youth of color.

Sakia held promise as a basketball player and was looking forward to becoming an upperclassman at

Newark’s West Side High. She and her friends were returning from socializing at NYC’s Greenwich Village piers. The ‘piers’ is a popular spot for lesbian, gay, and transgendered (LGBT) youth.

On the night Sakia was murdered, two men targeted them and wanted to instigate trouble. First flirting with and propositioning the ‘femmes’ in their group. The girls rebuffed the sexual advances of the much older assailants. Words were exchanged, a fight ensued, and Sakia was stabbed. She bled out and died in the arms of her best friend, Valencia.

1. See pictures from the Vigil of Sakia Gunn

2. Police arrest suspect in Gunn murder

3. Rallying for Sakia Gunn 

 Related Article

Erasing Sakia - Who's to blame?
By Kelly Cogswell and Ana Sim, The Gully

There are some fundamental errors in the way most journalists reported the brutal May 11 murder of Sakia Gunn, who would have turned sixteen just a few days ago. According to most accounts, Gunn and a group of her friends were propositioned by a couple of men in Newark, New Jersey. When the girls turned them down, explaining they were gay, the men attacked them. Gunn fought back, and one of the men, Richard McCullough, stabbed her.

The implication is that if the girls had politely said, "No thank you, not tonight, sweethearts," and then skeedaddled, the disappointed men would have left them alone.

In fact, it's far more likely that the men only propositioned Gunn and her friends because they knew the girls were dykes, and a sexual advance would provoke some kind of exchange. Judging by photos and TV footage, the girls couldn't pass as straight even if they'd wanted to. And, as McCullough's mother said, trying to prove he is no homophobe, the man is well acquainted with lesbians, since the grandmother who helped raise him actually was a lesbian.

The point is that the cause and effect nature of the reporting implies Gunn was killed in part for some inflammatory thing she said or did, when in fact she was a target before she opened her mouth. McCullough went through the charade looking for an excuse to inflict harm.

Another failure of the coverage, at least in the gay press, is the tendency to blame only white racism for the general invisibility of Sakia Gunn's murder. After all, the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a young, white, gay man in Wyoming, led to massive protests and vigils nationwide, spurred on federal hate crimes legislation (that has since stalled), and energized LGBT student movements like the Gay Straight Alliance. Sakia Gunn, on the other hand, was black, and so are her girlfriends and her alleged killer and his pal.

Newark activists could only get 100 people to Tuesday's march protesting the lack of response to Gunn's murder, and only The Star-Ledger carried a small story the next day reporting on it.

The problem here is that while white racism contributes significantly to Gunn's erasure from the media, and to the modest turnout at the protest, it doesn't do much to explain the apathy of Newark's black mayor, Sharpe James, and his powerful black Democratic machine. Only homophobia explains why James' post-funeral pledge to meet with Gunn's family and local gay activists about setting up a gay and lesbian counseling center for teens is always sometime in the future.

Only homophobia explains why new antigay behavior at Gunn's school, the West Side High School, has passed without comment or indignation from Mayor James. Why isn't he furious that students have been prohibited from organizing a memorial for Gunn? Why does he permit students to face suspension for wearing rainbow colors that identify them as gay, as if queers were a gang inciting violence instead of the victims of it? Why does he allow the principal of Westside High School, Ferdinand Williams, to make homophobic slurs against Gunn?

And where are the professionally outraged activists like Al Sharpton who always appear en masse to hold politicos accountable when young black people are cut down by hate and no one is doing anything? After all, he didn't let white censorship and racism stand in the way of protesting the murder of Amadou Diallo in New York, or Timothy Thomas hundreds of miles away in Cincinnati.

The reason why Sakia Gunn was killed, and why her murder has faded from the headlines, is that both whites and blacks wish young black queers would disappear. Until things change, they will, thanks to violence, and AIDS, and hate.