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Nigerian Lesbian will Die if Deported by UK

Sarah is a 27-year-old Christian Nigerian national who is currently detained at Yarl’s Wood, where she has been held since August 2010 as part of fast track. She is a lesbian and fears that she will be killed upon her return to Nigeria.

In 2002 after her uncle discovered her with a girlfriend, Sarah was raped and threatened with genital mutilation. Sarah arrived in the UK in 2004 and her applications for leave to remain have failed again and again. She was detained this year for overstaying and she risks removal at any moment.

AMERICA please Support Sarah’s campaign to stay in the UK!

In 2002, Sarah’s uncle learned that she was a lesbian after discovering her with a girlfriend. After raping her and threatening her with FGM, he took her to Lagos for a ‘spiritual deliverance’, conducted by a pastor over a period of 3-4 months. The pastor, believing that Sarah had been successfully ‘delivered’, told her to look after the children of a Nigerian family.

In 2004, the Nigerian family whose children she was looking after asked Sarah to accompany them to the UK. She was led to believe that she would go there to study and that they would act as her guardians.

Her passport and travel documents were kept by the family and she was promised that once in the UK they would help her begin school, a promise that never came to fruition. Instead she continued to look after the family’s children, although she was never paid.

In 2006 her employer discovered her with her then girlfriend and kicked her out of the house. Sarah has since been effectively forced into an engagement by her church, which she then broke off.

Sarah’s applications for leave to remain, as well as her appeals, have been consistently denied. In August of this year, she was taken to detention for overstaying after calling the police for a friend following a domestic quarrel.

If Sarah is returned to Nigeria, her life will be in grave danger. A 2008 Human Rights Report: Nigeria, by US Department of States records that, “Homosexuality is illegal under federal law; homosexual practices are punishable by prison sentences of up to 14 years.”

On top of this, vigilante violence against LGBT people is extremely frequent. The vast majority of Nigerian residents (97% according to the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project) believe that homosexuality should be rejected by society. This is clearly not a safe environment to be forced to return to.

As a signatory of the ECHR, the United Kingdom would not be fulfilling several of its international legal obligations if Sarah is deported. Sarah desperately needs the humanitarian protection which the UK must now supply.

Act Now!

Don’t wait! Contact the Home Secretary today.

Click here for sample model letter

Rt. Hon Theresa May, MP
Secretary of State for the Home Office,
2 Marsham St
London SW1 4DF

Fax The Secretary in UK at  020 7035 4745

AMERICANS Can help by drawing publicity to the Cae and writing the State Department to step in and convey support for Sarah, either by contacting the UK Secretary for Home Office or by Granting  Sarah refuge here in  the USA.

BY
Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com