Ugandan lesbian asylum seeker in the UK gets reprieve from deportation

Ugandan lesbian asylum seeker in the UK gets reprieve from deportation

A LESBIAN asylum seeker in the UK was temporarily reprieved from deportation to Uganda last week.

Judith Twiith Twikireze, 23, did not board the flight at Heathrow Airport following the lodging of a judicial review by her solicitor just two hours before.

She now has to prove her sexual orientation in order to remain in the UK.

Twikireze applied for asylum on September 29, but has been unable to collect the evidence necessary to prove her “gayness” in the given time frame.

Her case was part of the Detained Fast Track process, which pressures LGBT people into submitting sexually explicit and invasive material as evidence.

However, the country’s High Court ruled the process unlawful in a landmark case in July. The European Union, of which the UK is a part, has also recently banned a similar process.

The case has garnered attention and placed Twikireze at greater risk upon returning home.

Reports have said that she recalled stories if being exorcised by a witch doctor as a young tomboyish 10-year-old, which involved being cut by razors and forced to sleep in a haunted house every week for a year.

African LGBTI rights organisation the Out and Proud Diamond Group, along with a change.org petition called for a halt to the woman’s deportation.

Twikireze is now being held at Coinbrook Detention Centre where she awaits a decision.

She told PinkNews that she would rather die in the detention centre than return to her country where state-sanctioned homophobia is rampant.

Uganda is in the process of attempting to re-implement an anti-gay bill.

It is expected to be passed by parliament before Christmas as a “gift to the people,” politician Latif Ssebagala said to the Daily Nation.

It comes just months after the court-ordered annulment of the last anti-gay law, which was enacted in February this year.

The Anti-Homosexuality Act would have punished gay people with life imprisonment.

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