We ask for your solidarity to sign the petition and to give any other assistance to facilitate the right of stay for Success and Diane.
During our Women* Breaking Borders Bus Tour this summer (2018), Women in Exile & Friends had the opportunity of meeting and weaving a network with Flit Solidarity Africa.
Flit Solidarity Africa is an initiative of lesbian refugee women based in Munich, fighting against refugees’ discrimination laws, racism and heterosexism. For the refugee women from Women in Exile who are lesbian and had difficulties to talk about it, meeting refugee women from Flit Solidarity Africa, who are using lesbian as a reason of seeking asylum was very encouraging.
In an empowerment workshop “from personal problem to political activism” organised by Flit Solidarity Africa and their supporters during the summer tour, we were able to learn we are fighting the same fight. Our fights are connected as asylum seeking women who are fighting sexism and isolation. We realised how lesbian women are afraid to bring their sexuality in the open because after seeking for asylum, they are usually accommodated in the lagers without any consideration of their social or sexual orientation and or privacy.
Lesbian women are put under pressure by the BAMF to proof their sexual orientation. But only very few of them are believed.For this reason, many lesbian women who are seeking asylum are being threatened by deportations. This is contrary to the fact that every person has the right to explore their sexuality through relationships with any other human being without moral, social or political pressure.
The case of Success and Diane, members of Flit Solidarity Africa are the most recent deportation cases of lesbian refugee women. In a video interview lesbian women from Flit Solidarity Africa are narrating what awaits them in their home countries, which they run away from in the first place because of persecutions and hostility towards lesbian and gays.
Success and Diane have to seek church protection (Kirchenasyl) not to be deported while they look for alternatives with the help of the church and solidarity from all the groups and individuals fighting for “refugee rights” which are also “human rights”.
