Migrant is the first to win asylum over transphobic abuse

AN ACTIVIST from El Salvador has become the first asylum seeker to win refugee status in Britain after facing transphobic abuse at home.

The case of the 29-year- old was hailed as a landmark ruling that will open the door for other trans individuals who say they are persecuted in their home countries.

The appeal ruling found the activist, who campaigns against the abuse of transgender people, had been beaten up by police in 2013, and had been pelted in public with rubbish and on one occasion a bag of urine.

Judge Gaenor Bruce said this amounted to persecution and the transphobia activist would have to change their behaviour, live discreetly, and abandon political activity if they returned to El Salvador.

The activist, who suffers from depression and anxiety, was referred to in court using the gender neutral term ‘they’ under courtroom equality rules, and was named only as Mx M.

At the Upper Tribunal, which deals with immigration and asylum appeals,

‘A terrifying experience’

the judge set down an anonymity order over Mx M’s identity.

Judge Bruce ruled that earlier hearings in the tribunal system conducted since the asylum claim was lodged in 2017 had wrongly rejected the request for asylum by deciding that the treatment the activist faced in the Central American country El Salvador was no more than discrimination.

She said the police beating ‘was a physical assault, by the police, motivated by nothing other than homophobia. Five minutes is a long time to be beaten. I do not doubt that it was for the appellant a terrifying experience’.

The judge said this treatment broke human rights standards. ‘To be surrounded by men in authority, taunted, physically attacked and spat upon was surely an exercise in humiliation designed to punish the appellant for nothing more than being who they are,’ she added.

‘ The power imbalance between perpetrators and victim, and the nature of the assault, made it of sufficient severity to constitute inhuman and degrading treatment.’

The judge said that being hit by a bag of urine was ‘by any estimation, and for any victim, surely an act of inhuman and degrading treatment. Nor was any particular attention paid to the evidence that the projectiles very often included cans of drink, sometimes partially or entirely full.

‘LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people should not be expected to tolerate being abused and having rubbish thrown at them every single day of their lives,’ the judge added.

Referring to the activist, Judge Bruce said ‘it was their dyed blond hair, still at that stage short, which led to the attack by the police in 2013.

‘It was their decisions to live with their partner, and to use feminine accessories which led to the daily ritual of being showered with rubbish, pelted with cans and homophobic abuse. It was this ill-treatment which led them to modify their behaviour, for instance deciding not to hold hands with male partners in public.’

She added: ‘The appellant has been heavily involved in various LGBT activities in Liverpool, including an event to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Bi-phobia and Transphobia, Liverpool Pride, and various campaigning/arts events.’ The activist told The Guardian: ‘ The way the judge handled the case: she just understood me – all the tiny details... At the end, she started speaking to me in Spanish, to tell me she granted me the right to stay in this country and the right to be who I want to be. I just started to cry. I felt like I was born again.

‘In El Salvador, non-binary people [those who do not identify as either a man or a woman] are in so much danger – I’ve seen corpses.

‘Anything could have happened to me. I could have been tortured, raped, shot, killed.’

Nancy Kelley, chief executive of the campaign group Stonewall, said: ‘It is vital that the UK offers refuge to those for whom their own country is not safe.’