Last week, The Guardian newspaper reported that a 67-year-old Malaysian man was set for deportation back to his homeland, having been unable to prove his homosexuality as ground for asylum.
Yew Fook Sam, known to most as Sam, has highlighted that homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia, and highlighted the levels of persecution that those in the LGBTQ+ community face here – including an opposition party leader who believes that homosexuality causes earthquakes, and the public caning of a lesbian couple for attempted relations in a parked car.
We’d also like to highlight that activists are having their portraits removed from non-political exhibits, transgender women are beaten to death, our current PM has said the country does not “accept” LGBTQ+ lifestyle, and the latest dumb sh*t courtesy of our shameless, disgraced formed leader Najib Razak — that the only people who drive toll roads after 11pm are “ghosts, LGBT, and their customers.”
However, for the British Home Office, the fact that he cannot prove to have had a gay sexual relationship, nor a boyfriend, has resulted in disbelief over his claims. A Manchester immigration judge refused his refugee bid, calling Sam’s claim “incredible,” and telling those who supported him that they had been duped.
Many of his supporters have balked at the court’s decision, pointing out rightly that no 60-something individual would be held to the same standard were they heterosexual, and have put together a petition to let Sam stay. They hope that new evidence, along with support from community leaders, will give life to a new asylum claim.
For his part, Sam has said that he only came out of the closet two years ago, despite having initially left Malaysia for England in 2005, after his wife discovered his homosexual affairs abroad.
Kenneth Bohan, the chaplain at the Liverpool YMCA, and the network coordinator at Open Table, a Christian worship community for LGBTQ+ individuals, has said that lack of partner is not uncommon for someone in Sam’s position. At 67, facing numerous chronic illnesses, a limited income, and speaking English as a second language – finding a partner can be difficult. He added that “not every Christian chooses to be in a relationship, particularly later in life.”
“This is an argument we will likely make for the fresh asylum claim, that it is a western cultural assumption that you have to be sexually active in order to have a healthy sexuality. They couldn’t get away with saying to a 76-year-old heterosexual that you can’t be heterosexual because you don’t have a partner. It’s absurd and unjust.”
Other members of the LGBTQ+ community maintain that Sam is gay, saying that it is insulting to insinuate that he was “making it up.” Of particular concern is also the fact that widely circulated photos of Sam at Liverpool’s Pride march could be used to identify and harass him if he is sent back to Malaysia.
Having arrived in the UK 14 years ago, Sam worked and paid taxes right up until he was arrested by immigration police and taken to a London-area detention center in 2016. At the time, he had been working as a delivery driver in Cornwall.
While British judges agree that gay men in Malaysia “do form a particular social group that are at risk of persecution there,” the fact that he did not have a single past gay relationship made the fact that “the Appellant (Sam) left Malaysia in order to express his sexuality … incredible.”
While Sam prepares his new case, he hopes that evidence including his tax records and national insurance card, can show that he was not working illegally prior to his arrest, and explains why he waited as long to lodge an asylum bid.
As for the Home Office, they have clarified that they are “proud of their record of providing protection for asylum seekers fleeing persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and the UK remains a world leader in its approach to handling this type of asylum claim. We do not routinely comment on individual cases.”
