Brooklyn Community Pride Centre has
launched a platform for gays who have come to America seeking asylum. In the
first video of their new series, LGBTQ New Americans: Oral History Project,
Oliver from Nigeria tells his story. As a gay man, he was publicly humiliated
and a victim of housing discrimination.
Oliver came out Gay quietly in 2005, but
last year when a gang of neighborhood boys learned the young activist was gay,
they blackmailed him, stole his phone and clothing and, when he called their
bluff, told his mother.
In the United States, this event
surely would have been traumatizing. But in Nigeria, where Oliver lived until
he recently got asylum status, it almost cost him his life,even his landlord ejected him upon finding out and got bullied by some peers.
Oliver, still trembling from fear,
did not want to use his last name.
"I used to live with my mother,
but now she said I should never come back," he said. "She is the only
family I have."
The Nigerian Senate has passed a bill that criminalizes homopobia, forcing even families to report their
loved ones if they are in same-sex relationships. Its House of Representatives
will soon vote on it.
Under the proposed criminal code,
Oliver could be sent to jail for 14 years. If enacted, the law would also
penalize any organization that provides services to lesbian, gay, bisexual or
transgender citizens.
Oliver is one of 102 LGBT applicants
to win that status in the United States, thanks to the pro bono work of
Immigration Equality. They come countries like Jamaica (31) to El Salvador (6)
to Russia (7).
In one of the most terrifying
incidents, his uncle found out and made him seek help in the church. There, he
was locked up for days with angry mobs outside.
"It was horrifying," he
said. "I wanted to kill myself."
But in July, while attending the International
AIDS Conference in the U.S., he sought the protection of Asylum.
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