01

Bisi Balogun

“There was just emotion everywhere. I shouted out loud, I started crying. I was literally just sat at a bus stop when my life changed forever. I looked down and saw the word ‘hello’ appear on my phone and I was like, should I even look? It was the same jolt of fear I get every time my phone buzzes. Then I saw the words ‘Good news!’…

I was on the phone with a friend through all of this and he just asked what happened. I said, ‘I’ve got my stay’.

It’s been a long journey since leaving Nigeria, I had my first asylum interview in 2021. Now I pray for the others that are waiting, one day we can all rejoice together.”

Bisi – Aug 2023

02

Adamu

Extract from iNews article by Patrick Strudwick (July 26th 2023) interviewing our service users:

“Adamu didn’t know what was in the concoction he was being forced to drink – herbs perhaps; no one ever told him. But he knew what the physical effects were. ‘I felt horrible, I started vomiting, purging,’ he says. And he knew why he was made to gulp it down: to rid him of the demon of homosexuality.”

“In Nigeria where Adamu was born and raised, conversion therapy – attempts to ‘cure’ LGBT people – can take different forms than the kind found in the UK and US. The underlying belief is not just that being gay is wrong and sinful, but a mark of satanic possession that requires exorcism. This can include the laying on of hands, deliverance ceremonies, and the use of potions to make you vomit. Adamu’s mother, aunt, and other members of the family would stand over him, demanding he take the drink, checking to see he was swallowing the liquid that was supposed to make him heterosexual…

Read Full Article by clicking here

*names changed for anonymity purposes

03

Hiba Noor

“The first persecution I faced in my life started when I was just a four year old child. In my country, we have a tradition where before sending children to school, the parents send them to mosque to read religious education and to learn the religious holy book.

When I went to the mosque, I got confused because there were two rows – one row for male children and one row for female children. Can you imagine for a four or five year old child like me? I just got confused – oh my God… where do I have to sit?

Yet I always had a sense in me, since childhood I liked to wear girly things, wearing paint on my nails and having Henna tattoos on my hands at Eid. I always chose sharp colours to wear like my other female cousins were doing, as well as playing with dolls. I liked those kind of things.
My common sense at that time made me decide to sit down with the female row and I thought that was totally, absolutely right for me.

But when I sat down there and opened the holy book I just found myself suddenly full of pain, like the roof of the mosque had maybe fallen on me or something.

The teacher, the religious scholar, he had thrown a wooden frame – a very heavy wooden frame – at my back and it was injured. He shouted at me ‘why your parents don’t give you ethics? You sat down with females!’. I was just a four or five year old child so I start crying and my back was bleeding, yet he comes out to me. He grabbed me by the hair and he was dragging me on the floor and bringing me towards the male row.

When I grew up I would ask my mom, ‘Mom, why was I beaten that very first day in a mosque?’. What was my sin? That question stayed with me through to my teenage years. When I became open, then I got the answer. Society. They give me the answer.”

Hiba – October 2023