11th hour appeal makes Danish authorities postpone expulsion of transgender asylum seeker Fernanda Milán. Asylum Activists are optimistic.

My translation of an article in Danish Newspaper Modkraft

By Rune Eltard-Sørensen.

We are advised, in a press release,  from support group T-Refugee Project which was established to help her , that 26-year-old trans and human rights activist Fernanda Milan from Guatemala has not yet been deported from Denmark on Monday 17^th September.

"A reopening of the case has been requested, and until the Refugee Board advises the  police about whether Fernanda will be in Denmark during the investigation, the police will take no further action over the matter. We probably have at least won a few days,” wrote the group on its Facebook page.

"The fact that the authorities have moved the expulsion of Fernanda shows that they recognize that it is dangerous for her to return. The only thing we do not understand is just why they did not go all the way and give her asylum immediately," says Emil Cronjäger from the support group, who continues:

"But we are optimistic because we believe that Fernanda’s case was mishandled in the first place, and that a review is necessary to meet the requirements of both Danish legislation and international conventions", says Emil Cronjäger.

Denmark cannot escape responsibility for Fernanda.

The Pan-American Human Rights organisation,
The United Nations Association,
The Danish Institute for International Studies,
OASIS human rights organisation in Guatemala
and now
Amnesty International;
all say that Guatemala is one of the most dangerous places in the world for a transgender person. These organisations all provide ample evidence of widespread and systemic murder, harrassment, torture and official persecution. Charred bodies, stabbed, shot, tortured or just "disappeared" are the norm in a country where the average life expectancy of a trans person is 25.

The Danish Refugee Board does not think so however, and the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thurning-Schmidt does not want to get her hands dirty by involving herself. The official Danish policy is that it does not grant asylum to trans people because they are trans. However this does not mean that trans people do not suffer persecution, just that Denmark refuses to acknowledge that they do. Just because you refuse to see something does not mean it doesn't exist.

Yet, by sending Fernanda Milan back to Guatemala they are in clear breach of international law which states that it is illegal to deport someone to a country where they are likely to be killed or tortured. Whether or not Denmark has a policy of granting asylum to trans people they cannot ignore, either legally or morally, the actual situation on the ground in Guatemala. If Fernanda is sent back in three days' time she will die. Most people think she will not see 2013. some consider that she will not see October, some are of the opinion that she may not even get out of the airport alive.

If the Danish government does deport her, they will, in doing so, be responsible, both directly and indirectly, for her death, and that is something trans people around the world will not allow Helle Thurning-Schmidt to forget. In the end the buck stops at her office. She may not "recognise" gender identity as a reason to grant asylum, but if Fernanda is sent back to her death the consequences for the Danish Prime Minister will be real and will last a lifetime.

Expulsion of Transactivist in Conflict with Danish Policy.

 My translation of article in Danish newspaper Homotropolis...

September 12th, 2012 Homotropolis

Everything indicates that if the transgender human rights and LGBT activist Fernanda Milán is expelled from Denmark to Guatemala on Monday, she will be in danger. The Refugee Board’s decision arouses indignation and amazement.

On Monday, human rights and LGBT activist Fernanda Milán will be deported to Guatemala, where she is at serious risk of assault, torture and death. This is not just Fernandas own assessment of the situation in Guatemala, but also the view of senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), Ninna Nyberg Sorensen, who for has many years studied the situation in the Central American country. Nyberg Sørensen says that Denmark is already fully aware of the risk to which we expose Fernanda Milán, by condemning her to deportation, she cannot understand the decision:

“That LGBT people in Guatemala suffer from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment - that included threats of violence, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence in prisons and other institutions, and medical testing without prior consent - is not only known among national, regional and international human rights people, but also by the Danish state.

Denmark, has since 1992 supported human rights organizations in Guatemala and the Pan-American Human Rights System. The Danish development system has continued to receive reports from organizations it funds, in which murders and assaults on activists have been clear. Why does the Refugee Board not have this knowledge relating to the treatment of Fernanda Milan’s asylum case?”

Refugee Board failure

The Asylum Working Party, T-Refugee Project, which is committed to Fernandas case, is also dismayed by the decision.

“It seems completely obvious to us that the Refugee Board has not done an adequate job in this case. The decision to refuse asylum has been taken without all relevant information being included in the decision, and obviously this shouldn’t be allowed.” says Emil Cronjäger in a press release, and backed by Stine Larsen, also from T-Refugee Project:

“It may surprise many as to why this knowledge has not been taken into account when the Danish government has known about it for years. It seems frankly like shoddy work, and I do not think that it puts Denmark in a particularly positive light when we on the one hand support human rights work around the world, while on the other, deport even those openly persecuted by torture and killings. It is deeply hypocritical and directly subversive of the foreign policy set by the Government. So they cannot both say that they support human rights and simultaneously expel a person like Fernanda Milán. It simply makes no sense, "said Stine Larsen.

Reasoned and well-documented fears

Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, amongst other things, an expert in gender, migration and deportation in Central America, has a thorough knowledge of the situation of human rights activists and LGBT people in Guatemala, and says it the prospects are not good.

“Fernanda Milan's fears are not unfounded. Over the summer of 2012, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed its concern over the murders of first a 19-year-old trans woman in Guatemala City (28 June), then two trans women in Villanueva (July 9), and finally the murder of a Honduran transgender person in Guatemalan territory (11 July). Local trans and human rights organizations report murders or 'forced disappearances' of at least 30 transgender people in Guatemala from 2009-2010. In the period 2005-2008 reported killing of approx. 50 LGBT people. The bodies are often terribly mauled, it is not uncommon that genitals are cut off, or that the body is dismembered to send out a warning that only heterosexual gender identity and practice will be accepted. A report from March 2012 estimated the average life expectancy of transgender people in Guatemala to be 25 years”

Demands for Justice minister’s involvement

Emil Cronjäger from T-Refugee Project also emphasizes in its press release that the Danish government has a direct responsibility for Fernanda Milan's fate and urges the Minister of Justice to investigate:

“If Denmark does not change its decision in this case, we are directly complicit in the abuses to which Fernanda Milán will be exposed in Guatemala. Responsibility cannot be swept away with the claim that there wasn’t enough evidence about the local situation, we now have many years evidence about this. It cannot be swept away by arguing Fernanda is not personally persecuted: She's been attacked and threatened repeatedly, including by the national police PNC.

“Just the fact that she is transgender should in itself be enough that she should not be expelled. This group is so extremely exposed, as it is. When you then include the fact that she has been a figurehead for human rights organization OASIS, whose leading members the last few years have been murdered indiscriminately, then it's completely outrageous that the Refugee Board chooses to continue to reject her application. I sincerely hope that it is an error by the authorities and not a general pattern or a conscious decision.

“If we choose to maintain this decision, Denmark is not just on a collision course with the UN Refugee commission's crystal clear statements about persecution based on gender and gender identity as a basis for asylum. We are also helping to undermine our own foreign policy to strengthen human rights around the world. I invite the Minister of Justice to take up this matter and reverse this decision, so we are not complicit in human rights abuses and so we do not put our own foreign policy to shame.” Says Emil Cronjager

Demonstrators want change in Danish Asylum policy: Stop the deportation of human rights activist Fernanda Milan.

Tomorrow, Saturday the 8 September, at midday asylum activists will demonstrate at Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen with the aim of preventing the deportation of Guatemalan Fernanda Milan. According to the organisers from the T-Refugee Project her expulsion does not take account of international conventions and individual risks.

Fernanda Milan stands to be deported on the 17^th September after being refused asylum by the refugee board. As a result a group of activists in Denmark formed the support group T-Refugee Project. Emil cronjager from the group says;

“We don’t think the refugee board has understood that as an individual, Fernanda’s life is in danger in Guatemala. Because of Fernanda’s gender identity and her political activism she risks persecution, attack and eventual death. She is in extreme individual danger, if she is sent back to Guatemala.”

Stine Larsen, who is also active in the T-Refugee Project adds: “Fernanda is a well-known face in Guatemala because, over the course of many years has been open about being transgender, and also because she has been a spokesperson for the OASIS organization which works for trans people’s rights.”

Fernanda Milan is convinced that there was no other option other than to flee:

“I know no transgender people in Guatemala  older than 35 and many of my friends have been killed. When I was repeatedly attacked by members of the public and police officers, I decided that I had to do something to save my life."

“I fled to Denmark, because I had heard that it was a good country for minorities.” 

Fernanda is sorry she had to leave her family and her friends from the human rights organization OASIS 

"As a human rights activist, I am used to fighting for other trans people’s lives. I'm sorry that I had to leave my country because I was an important leader in fighting for transgender people. They needed me. But I'm sure I would have been killed if I had not fled. I had to do it. "

For Saturday's demonstration, T-Refugee Project invited a wide range of people,  the organization believes that Fernanda Milan's case is a matter that cuts across political and social boundaries. 

"We believe that everyone in Denmark must see that we should observe basic human rights. Unfortunately, Denmark is on a collision course with the EU and the UN Refugee Convention over this case, and we do not understand why she has been turned down. It appears to have been the result of a bad decision-making process. Both her ​​transgender status and her background as a human rights activist represent huge risks for her if she is sent back to Guatemala. But when you combine the risk factors, it's utterly inconceivable that we in Denmark have decided to refuse her asylum,” states Emil Cronjager.

Ninna Nyberg Sorensen, a researcher at DIIS, is one of those who has declared her support for T-Refugee Project's demonstration. Just on the basis of its general knowledge about human rights in Guatemala supports Fernanda’s right to asylum in Denmark:

"Violence against women and minorities is widespread in Guatemala, and it has been repeatedly demonstrated that state authorities, for example. the national police; PNC, has been involved in sexual violence and killing, not least prostitutes, homosexuals and trans people. This violence has been described as 'social cleansing', and has often had political support. An incompetent legal system and widespread impunity makes the situation more serious. Not only do sexual minorities risk being mistreated and killed; criminals will in all likelihood not be punished." she says.

T-Refugee Project also believes that Denmark is guilty of the same impunity that exists in Guatemala, when the rapes of Fernanda Milán in Sandholm not investigated. Stine Larsen explains:

"Can it really be that Denmark cannot protect an asylum seeker better than this? Fernanda Milán had to flee the refugee camp because of repeated rapes there, where the Red Cross had placed her in the men’s dormitory. Is this how Denmark treats asylum seekers? Is this how Denmark treats minorities?”

Emil Cronjager continues: "The Attorney-General's responsibility is to ensure that such a thing does not take place, and that when there are serious errors like this, they are investigated. In the T-Refugee Project, we demand that the Minister of Justice goes in and investigates. Those responsible must be punished, and the Red Cross should receive training about trans people’s needs and rights."

“What I’m most afraid of when I go back, isn’t being killed. What really petrifies me is being attacked and tortured.”

The following is my translation of an article which apeared in the Danish newspaper Politiken on the 14 August 2012

A link to the original Danish Article is here

Transgender woman Fernanda raped in a Danish centre for asylum seekers.

In Denmark you are a man if it says so on your papers.

By Gry Pauline Koefoed

Large brown eyes framed with eyeliner and mascara, “Paola” she says with a cautious, gentle voice and holds out a hand with lightly polished nails. Her shirt is slightly open at her breasts. “Fernanda” says the other whose blouse shows one shoulder. Her make-up is flawless and her long shiny hair falls down to her back.

The two women both fled to Denmark from Guatemala and both of them, if one looks at their papers, are men, in Danish law. So when Fernanda came to Denmark and sought asylum she was placed in the male wing of Sandholm refugee camp.

“I was really scared. I was new to this country. I came from a foreign country and from a terrifying background, and I faced daunting prospects here in Denmark, so I said nothing.”

She can’t remember how many months she was in Sandholm, she has suppressed it in the hope of forgetting the assault, rapes and other humiliations she suffered while she lived there.

“I wasn’t raped by just one man but by many.”

Only for women

In Sandholm she had her own room, which she should have shared with another transgender woman, who never came because she refused to live with the men.

“I didn’t want special treatment but I do have special needs because of who I am.”

One night several men broke into her room, where they raped her. She fled the camp the same night.

“I didn’t go to the Red Cross and report it. It was them who put me there. Why should I trust people who hadn’t even bothered to listen and who had put me in that situation?”

Danish Red Cross which runs the Sandholm Centre has not commented on the case, but according to the head of asylum Anne La Coeur, there is no automatic placement in a particular type of accommodation when in comes to transgender people, but they do have specific guidelines which apply when dealing with sexual minorities.

“Basically a transgender woman is likely to be placed in a male dormitory but in a single room. But we would not place her in a women’s dormitory because that is definitely for women, where cannot permit ourselves to place a man.” Says Anne La Coeur.

Consequence of her choice.

Alone in a new country and without anywhere to go, Fernanda ended up being trafficked to a brothel in Jutland. It was only after a police raid on the brothel where she was working that she came into contact with the organization Reden International, where she has lived since February 2011. Linked to the possibility that her asylum case might be reopened she was subsequently humiliated at the police station in charge of its reopening. Here she was told that rape was a consequence of her choice.

“Being a transgender woman is not a choice. You feel you were born this way. It is not my fault, but it was as if he blamed me for being who I am.”

Her stay at Sandholm also had other, physical consequences.

The hormone treatment she had been taken since she was 14 was suspended, and it was more than a year before she again received this, necessary treatment, so that she can maintain her feminine appearance. Acording to Fernanda missing the hormone treatment  was one of the worst things that has happened to her since she has been in Denmark. Her body began to change in a way she didn’t want.

To obtain female hormones requires an interview and a course at the Sexology Clinic at the national Hospital. By the time Fernanda came to being seen by the clinic they assessed her as not transgender.

“They cannot decide for me who and what I am” she says.

Repatriation equals a death sentence.

Paola has lived together with Fernanda at the International Women’s  Centre since March 2011, she is also transgender. She first sought asylum last year, when she went to the Women’s Centre. For that she is relieved, as she has little doubt that her story would have been identical to Fernanda’s if she had applied before she got to the women’s centre. Paola is undergoing a course at the Sexology Clinic but has still not commenced hormone therapy.

Both women are terrified of being sent home. Fernanda has had a response to her asylum application. On the 17^th September she will be on board a plane to Guatemala. Paola is still waiting for the response to hers.

“Life for transgender people in Guatemala is terrible. You suffer discrimination and you have no rights” Says Paola.

The two women, who have both fought for transgender rights in Guatemala, say that transgender people have no possibilities other than prostitution. Yet these two both tried another way. Paola enrolled on an educational course and paid a lot of money to be accepted, but on the first day when she showed up and they found that her gender did not match that on her ID, she was thrown out.

“Education was only for men and women and not for people like me.” Says Paola.

"In Guatemala if you are different you are cut off from your family, from society and by the government. You cannot get an education. You cannot get medical treatment because if you arrive at the hospital as a woman and your papers say that you are not, they refuse to treat you even if you are bleeding to death. They would rather let you die than treat you.” Says Fernanda.

The reason, according to Fernanda, is that Guatemala is a Catholic country, where the church has a great deal of power, and its fear spreads out through society and makes people resort to vigilantism. “I know no transgender people in Guatemala over 35,” she says.

“What I’m most afraid of when I go back, isn’t being killed. What really petrifies me is being attacked and tortured.” Says Fernanda.

Transphobia and misogyny at the BBC - Pathetic responses from the terminally uncool.

Being snowed under with a pile of work has kept me from blogging of late, but there have been a few happenings that I feel require comment.

 The first of these is as a result of Paris Lees' excellent article in the Independent about the transphobic abuse by "Snog, marry, avoid" on BBC 3, a typical example of the current fashion for cheap and nasty TV as the BBC competes with dodgy commercial channels in a race to the bottom. Paris is of course right to call the producers of this programme on their transphobia and, like her, I believe this issue goes way further. 

One of the problems with describing the girl with slightly untidy hair and a slightly les well-plucked eyebrows as a transsexual is that it is not merely transphobic in that it stereotypes trans people, but it is also highly misogynist, because it uses the threat of looking like some imaginary stereotypical transsexual as a stick to beat women with. "Conform to the ideal of beauty as set out in women's/gossip magazines/adverts/the fashion industry, or you will look like someone who is not a 'real' woman." So now "transsexual" has become an insult with which to beat women, but it is effectively two insults in one; it is designed to take the piss out of trans women as well.

Double bigotry from an organisation that takes its funding from all of us through the licence fee, including trans people and cis women. Nice one BBC for using our own money to oppress us. The Daily Mail could take a leaf out of your book.

So far, so nasty. One of the rules of life in general has always been, "when you are in a hole, stop digging". Advice the BBC has ignored in this case. Describing this incident as intended to be light-hearted and humorous, the BBC has added insult to injury. Humiliating, stereotyping, discrimination-inducing language, which causes trans people severe problems;

at school,

at work (or most likely out of it),

in the street,

on the bus,

 at religious gatherings,

with their own families,

down the pub,

on the tube...

 Yes this is humour at the expense of a group of people already experiencing severe disadvantage. "Humour" of the Bernard Manning type? Humour that helps keep trans people in the position of severe disadvantage. As we all know, that place is not a nice place for many of us. Trans people are turned into objects of ridicule, not real people.

Go on lads, you can take the piss/beat up/harass/torment/rape these people, because that is what's what they are there for! They're not really people... Lovely.

But what has angered me most about this incident, is that the BBC have been using this excuse for bigoted, transphobic TV for a very long time. For as long as I have been complaining about the transphobic nature of the BBC's, and every other TV station's, output, they have used the same tired old excuse. TMW have, of course done a sterling job over the last couple of years, and it is a measure of how far we have come that Paris was able quickly to get an article in a mainstream newspaper criticising the programme makers for their failings. But it really is time we stopped allowing these media types to get away with the same old pathetic excuses;

"light-hearted",

"no offence intended",

"just a bit of fun."

It is time we demanded better. It is time we called them on their responses to criticism, it is time they started responding with "Yes we got it wrong, we apologise and we won't do it again..." It is time they started to feel the humiliation that they inflict on us.

It is time they were faced with the reality that their transphobia is terminally uncool, they are not the hyper-hip metrosexuals in designer jeans they want us all to think they are. Transphobia is uncool, in fact it has been for some time, that is why it is most often seen in places like the Daily Mail, the Sun, Whatsisface's Good News, and tired cheap (in every sense of the word) garbage TV like SMA.

In terms of coolness, transphobia piled on top of misogyny puts the makers of this programme in the baking heat of the Sahara desert, and about as far from cool as a Daily Mail journalist, it is about time they were made to feel the heat of their own making.

A cry of help from Spain...

"Increasing transphobia in the Spanish government.

Today, the Spanish state secretary for social Wellbeing (?) and Equality (?) has made a public statement putting the  Autonomous regions in competition to see who offeres more, who cheaper, who went further, both in the health field, where the health portfolio has soared and we have from sex-change operations covered by the public funds to any type of implant and plastic surgery, as in social policy

This statement is the last call to transphobia after four days of a media campaign to show the gender reassignment surgery as one of the main causes of the unsustainability of the public health system in Spain, making us appear as a group of capricious people who take advantage of the public treasury to receive aesthetic surgeries that are not really essential to us, while the rest of the population suffers a lack of health services.

This campaign began on april 8th, when some radical media announced that “sex change surgery” will be retired from the public health system. This first statement was not very worrying as it was an isolated statement from a medic who is known to be Christian (Intereconomía TV and La Gaceta). On April 11th the conservative newspaper ABC, also announce the retirement of “sex change surgery” in first place, followed by other health services, emphasizing on the capricious nature of the “sex change” surgery.

In Spain, a state secretary is a member of the Government, almost the same category as a minister, and now we feel that we are object of a campaign to demonize us and make transgender people a scapegoat for the anger of the rest of the society. We are frightened, thinking that we can lose in few weeks not only the health rights acquired after years fighting, but also our dignity as human beings.

We think that we shall report these statements as incitement to discrimination and hatred based on gender identity, but we have no idea how could we do this, and we don’t have any funding to hire a lawyer or something like that. The main LGTB associations remain quiet and calm, as if they were quite comfortable whit this situation, but we know that the threat is real. Any suggestion or help is needed and welcomed."

Pablo Vergara Pérez