Rights advocate wins scholarship
LGBTI rights advocate Senthorun Raj will travel to San Francisco and London to learn more about LGBTI-based refugee claims around the world.
Raj, the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby senior policy advisor, was awarded a Churchill Fellowship scholarship worth over $20,000 on Monday July 9. He will compare sexuality and gender diverse-based refugee claims in Australia, the UK and the US.
He said he was very grateful for the scholarship.
“I’m really looking forward to travelling overseas to meet some new people, to work with some new NGOs [Non-Government Organisations] and see what the experience is like in different countries.”
Raj studied a similar topic for his honours research, and said the Department of Immigration and Citizenship did not disclose the number of LGBTI-based claims made for refugee status.
“One of the critical problems is that there is limited public data available.”
He said “only a handful” of failed sexuality-based claims were appealed.
“We know that a lot of the decision makers or adjudicators are adjudicating these claims inappropriately,” he said, citing cases of refugee applicants who had been questioned on gay clubs, their social groups and the number of sexual partners they had.
While in Australia Gillard wants to send them to Malaysia, where the Deputy Prime Minister was bashed and jailed for Sodomy. Malaysia can ill aford to take refugees, while Australia scrambles to stop them comming at all. Gillard could fly them in if she was really worried about leaky boats. She just wants to punish people on behalf of the Catholic faceless men that run the ALP.