Malaysian malaise

>> A gay south Asian refugee faces
imminent deportation and further abuse

CASE AT CRISIS STAGE: GLAM’s Alan Wong

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Next Thursday, March 6, “AK,” a 56-year-old Malaysian man, may find himself on a plane back to his home country, his refugee application in Canada denied. But what worries him more than finding himself back in the country he fled is the reception he’ll get. AK is gay, has been arrested by police in the conservative, Muslim-dominated country, and tells the Mirror his family has turned his back on him.

“For gays in Malaysia, it’s terrible,” he says. “One of the government ministers there said that homosexuality is a worse crime than murder.” He’s referring to a quote taken from a Time magazine interview with the head of education and research at Malaysia’s Islamic Affairs Department, whose 50 agents act as the country’s morality police.

AK asked the Mirror that his name not be used, nor his photo taken, out of fear of how it will affect his last-minute appeal in Canada, and his arrival back in Malaysia.

He has already been arrested once in Malaysia, where he says police “sexually, verbally and physically” assaulted him. He was violently pulled out of the closet after his live-in, 12-year Muslim lover revealed to his parents, who’d been pressuring him to marry, the true nature of their relationship while AK, a Hindu, was on vacation in Canada. He returned to Malaysia, where he says he was constantly harassed by not only his lover’s family, but also by his own, and imprisoned for five days. He was released, he says, on the condition that he cut off all contact with his lover. He left for Canada shortly after, and hasn’t spoken to his ex-lover since.

Once in Canada, he applied for refugee status, he says, but a Muslim judge turned him down. He appealed, but lost, and re-applied on humanitarian grounds. He says he hired an incompetent advocate, and then received a deportation order for March 6.

Alan Wong, the coordinator of Gay and Lesbian Asians of Montreal (GLAM), says this is the first time that he knows of a situation like this “reaching crisis stage.” A personal acquaintance of AK’s, Wong says cases like his aren’t unheard of—refugees often don’t know or understand the application process, and are reluctant to reveal their homosexuality (he says he doesn’t have any statistics on the number of people who apply for refugee status based on their sexuality largely for this reason). Combined with a refugee system in Canada that is under strain and constant criticism—memories are still fresh of scandals involving appointed judges exchanging favourable rulings for sex—and it’s not surprising that members of Parliament like Outremont’s NDP representative Thomas Mulcair are describing the system as “broken” and “severely flawed.”

Mulcair has personally written a letter to federal Immigration Minister Diane Finley urging a stay of deportation. “I can’t conceive of a Canada that would expel someone in the full knowledge that in all likelihood they will be subject to torture and possibly death,” Mulcair tells the Mirror.

In the next week, Wong and other members of GLAM and Coalition MultiMundo, a coalition of queer communities, will be furiously writing letters of support and trying to heighten the case’s profile. But if things don’t work out for AK, he says he’ll obey the ruling, however reluctantly.

“I will respect the government’s laws, but I still feel justice is not there for me,” he says.