LONDON – Gay rights group OutRage! condemns Home Secretary David Blunkett’s policy of ‘white listing’ countries from which no further asylum applications will be accepted. Any asylum applications, for whatever reason, will be "be presumed to be unfounded" if they originate from countries on the ‘white list’.

OutRage! is most concerned that countries like Jamaica are included on the list. While Mr Blunkett has said that Jamaica is a democracy and that “it is frankly not credible to suggest people routinely fear for their lives", the persecution and violence suffered by gay, lesbian and transgender people is well documented.

“It is callous in the extreme” said Brett Lock, a spokesperson for OutRage!, “it sends a message that queers deserve what they get, wherever they get it. Obviously Mr Blunkett does not consider violence against the gay community a legitimate form of persecution or worthy of international attention or condemnation.”

“Presumably the Home Office has a list of various forms of persecution and of documented violence against minority groups. Gays, lesbians and transgender clearly people have not made that list,” adds Lock.

The case of three gay Jamaican asylum seekers – whose applications were approved –was in the news very recently, so it is impossible that Mr Blunkett is simply ignorant of the issues facing the gay community in Jamaica.

The climate of violence and the abuse directed at gay Jamaicans has also been highlighted over the past six months by a high-profile OutRage! campaign. Reports have emerged about random beatings, organised vigilante attacks and even a case where man was driven into the sea to drown by a pursuing mob. There have been several deaths. Julius Powell of Jamaica’s gay rights group J-Flag says that the root cause is Jamaica’s "cultural intolerance" towards homosexuals.

“It is outrageous that the Home Office is buckling to political pressure to reduce the number asylum seekers by gambling with people’s lives and safety,” argues Lock. “Each applications ought to be an individual case judged on its own merits, not by excluding whole classes of people and entire countries with broad strokes. Even the United Nations does not accept that any one country can be declared safe.”

OutRage! issues an urgent call to David Blunkett and the Home Office to affirm that it takes the plight of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people around the globe seriously.

ENDS

© OutRage! News Service. 2003
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