Free Edson Cosmas and all
immigration detainees!
Fight racism and anti-gay
prejudice!
AMNESTY NOW FOR ALL
MIGRANTS, REFUGEES &
ASYLUM SEEKERS!
Build a mass independent,
integrated, youth-lead civil
rights movement
We must not allow Edson Cosmas to be deported.
The only way to significantly change the racist,
stifling, unjust immigration system is to unite our
communities, black, Asian, Kurdish, Latin American,
and immigrant groups, and mobilize our collective
power now. We demand Amnesty Now for all
immigrants, ending the insane, immigration process
that dehumanizes everyone involved and abandons
Britain’s promise of equality.
For every loved one, every neighbour or friend of yours,
for yourself, if we stand together and build our
independent movement, speaking the truth about
racism, we march together for amnesty, and we build
ourselves on that basis, we can clear out the backward
policies and fight to win change. A perspective of
holding demonstrations in our communities that shut
down the streets, and join people with and without
citizenship, LGBT and straight, will strengthen our side
to be the force needed to win. Join MFJ on Tuesday to
demonstrate at the Home Office, and get our
communities on our feet fighting for our right to be
here, without fear!
FREE EDSON COSMAS NOW!
Edson “Eddy” Cosmas is a young black gay man who
comes from Tanzania in east Africa. Like many of us and
many of our families and friends he is part of this diverse,
integrated community that has links around the world,
especially to former British colonies like Tanzania. He has
lived and studied in London for several years and he spent
time in Manchester as a child while his father was studying
there. None of the obstacles facing poor, bright ambitious
young people including the loss of EMA, the university fee
hikes or the shortage of job opportunities in the fields he is
qualified to work in have broken Eddy’s spirit or dampened
his determination to succeed. Eddy is the kind of person a
mother would be proud to call son, a neighbour would
welcome to their community. At the same time Eddie is a
leader. As a member of Movement for Justice, Eddie has
lead campaigns against racism, anti-gay bigotry and for
immigrant rights.
DEMONSTRATION
Tuesday 24th May
2pm @ The Home Office
Marsham St. Westminster/St James Park tube
As a gay man living in Britain Eddy can live and love
openly, can proudly live as himself. In Tanzania, he would
be tortured, and persecuted for his sexual orientation. A
number of openly gay and lesbian youth in Tanzania have
been tortured and murdered for speaking out against anti-
gay legal and cultural prejudices and discrimination. Eddy
would love to be able to go back to Tanzania but under the
current circumstances a trip home even just to visit family
and friends would not only risk Eddy’s life, but would also
endanger the lives of those close to him. Eddy, like so
many political refugees in Britain, campaigns tirelessly to
bring the kind of democratic freedoms we take for granted
here to his native land including ending the anti-gay
policies and practices in Tanzania while at the same time
waging his own personal struggle to get the British Home
Office to follow the law and grant him asylum. Eddy like
so many refugees is as much British as he is Tanzanian.
On 9th May Eddy, went to the Home Office in Croydon to
submit his initial claim for asylum in Britain and to go to a
screening interview. British law requires the Government to
grant asylum to anyone who is gay and would face political
persecution for being gay if they were returned to the
country they were born in. At the end of the interview,
Eddy was stunned to be told that he was going to be taken
into detention.
Eddy’s detention is part of an anti-gay and racist policy of
the Home Office aimed at circumventing a Supreme Court
decision that requires the Home Office to treat gay rights
activists as political leaders, no different from any other
refugee fighting for democracy and basic human rights.
The attitude and practice of the Home Office has more in
common with the right-wing religious bigots and
fundamentalists who treat gay sexuality as an aberration
which can be easily altered or repressed. The Home Office
refuses to treat the fight of, in particular, gay activists from
Africa who are on the forefront of the struggles against
despotism, religious fundamentalism and for human rights,
as political leaders. The level of the Home Offices blatant
racist and anti-gay disregard for gay refugee political
leaders who deserve to be treated as heroes, is not only
shocking and unacceptable, but it is also something we can
stop.
The British Supreme Court ruled months ago to overturn
the old absurd and blatantly anti-gay British immigration
policy of telling gay people who would be tortured or
persecuted if they were deported back to their country of
origin, that they should “just stay in the closet” or “act
straight”,
But front line immigration officers have done everything in
their power to undermine the new Court ruling. Lesbians
and gay asylum seekers are asked to “prove” that they are
gay; to present names of sexual partners, graphic
descriptions of their sexual acts, pictures of themselves at
gay bars and letters from friends and family swearing to
their sexual identity. Many lesbian and gay asylum seekers
have put up with humiliating physical examinations,
insulting and ridiculous accusations of self torture, and
gruelling ten hour or more interviews about every aspect of
the most intimate details of their personal life to “prove
they are gay and in danger of persecution”.
Because many gay activists have persevered and
successfully won asylum - almost always through an appeal
process before a public Tribunal - the Home Office has
resorted to a new set of racist and anti-gay tactics to expel
African gay activists before they have the opportunity to
attain a good solicitor and present their case. Openly gay
activists like Eddy, who should be granted asylum without
question, are now being “fast-tracked” – held in detention
with no right to secure a lawyer of their choice and set up
for a series of hastily scheduled sham hearings that are
certain to result in quick deportations. We cannot allow the
Home Office to get away with this crime.
It’s clear that under the current political climate of
immigrant bashing, the Home Office believes that it can
cling onto its longstanding racist and anti-gay practices and
get away with it. Getting the Home Office to implement
new and progressive immigration policies derived from the
struggles of people in the neo-colonies and civil rights
movements within Britain has always required mass action.
What is at stake in Eddy’s case is so fundamental and
important to the cause of freedom and the advancement of
democracy and equality both here and in Africa, that it is
crucial for us to build the mass action needed to win.
If the Home Office gets away with deporting Eddy, every
black and Asian asylum seeker will face even greater
danger of being railroaded out of Britain to imprisonment
or death. For those of us from Britain and other places who
strive everyday to get this society to accept the full and real
equality of lesbian and gay men, Eddy’s deportation would
represent a real setback for our struggle. The courageous
and inspiring struggles of the youth in Egypt, Tunisia and
other Arab and Sub-Saharan African countries who are
disproportionately lesbians and gay men, will be set back
if Britain hypocritically claims to support these struggles,
but then turns around and refuses to offer refuge to the
young leaders of these mass movements for democracy and
freedom.
Edson is in Britain to escape imprisonment, Tanzania’s
anti-gay laws, assault, torture or murder at the hands of the
police or anti-gay mobs. In Tanzania, like neighboring
Uganda and many other impoverished African countries,
the political regime and right-wing religious leaders are
whipping up hatred of gay men and lesbians to maintain
power and to divide and conquer the movements for
democracy. The struggle for freedom to define one’s own
sexuality is necessarily tied to the struggle for greater
democracy and secularism.
Over the last decade, people from extremely repressive
African and Asian countries have formed LGBT groups,
creating networks which have reinforced each other across
continents and seas, consolidating resistance to anti-gay
oppression, not only in their own nations but in Britain, the
U.S, and some European nations. The struggles in Africa
and in Asia have won changes in many areas and advanced
the struggles for civil rights and human dignity everywhere.
AMNESTY NOW! End this divisive, racist system
Discrimination and prejudice against migrants and refugees
is one of the successful policies of the politicians and the
rich and powerful who need to scapegoat someone for the
economic crisis created by the banks and billionaires.
Racism is the single most important divide-and-rule policy
utilized by the Government to keep us from standing
together and fighting the cuts. We need unity to protect all
our living standards and the new diverse and integrated
Britain that is home to all of us. Raids and deportations
undermine and threaten everyone of African, Caribbean,
Asian, Latin American, Arab and other non-white origin in
this country, no matter how long our families have lived
and worked here.
Wherever we are, it is essential that we fight against
anti-immigrant prejudice, racism, the oppression of
women and discrimination against the lesbian/gay
community if we want to live in a fully democratic
society based on real equality and justice. When our
communities are discriminated against, oppressed or
victimised we are denied our basic democratic and
human equality. When one set of religious or cultural
values is imposed on everyone, the whole society is
divided against itself. We can win support around the
demand AMNESTY NOW, and can force an end to the
divisive persecution of immigrants if we mobilize. All
can then live in safety and contribute fully to this
society and we can end the police state-style rule of the
immigration authorities, close the detention centres and
stop deportation.
Join the Movement for Justice
We march today, we march tomorrow, and we keep
marching to build a new Britain, diverse, integrated and
equal. We aim to win. We tell the truth about racism,
sexism and anti-gay bigotry. We believe every human
being is entitled to a job, to education, to food, shelter
and the other necessities of life, so that every one of us
can live in dignity, proud to be who we are, encouraged
and able to fulfill our aspirations: Get in touch to join,
and to start an MFJ group at your school, college, 6 th
form or University.
Find us on FB: ‘Movement for Justice by any
means necessary’
www.movementforjustice.org
Email: mail@movementforjustice.org.uk
Call: 07930 30 22 63