News
2005-12-15
Appeals court
denies asylum for gay Zimbabwe man
Gay man's asylum
denied
A federal appeals
court rejected a gay Zimbabwe man's request for asyl
A federal appeals
court on Tuesday disagreed with a gay Zimbabwe man's
argument that he needed protection from persecution in his
native country, upholding a lower court's denial of
asylum. The eighth U.S. circuit court of appeals in
St. Louis decided 2–1 to send William J.
Kimumwe home, despite Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's
repeated condemnation of gays and lesbians, including
describing them as "lower than pigs and dogs."
Kimumwe, recently
of Minneapolis, said he fears persecution. He cited
cases from his past in Zimbabwe, in which he said he was
expelled from school in 1995 for having sex with
another male student at age 12 and detained for two
months in 1998 after a fellow student reported a sexual
encounter, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Kimumwe said he came to the United States in 2002, was
eventually turned down for asylum, and appealed.
The court panel
ruled that Zimbabwean authorities reacted to Kimumwe's
conduct, not necessarily his homosexuality, and noted that
he had admitted getting the other student drunk in the
second case, the paper said. Judge Gerald Heaney, the
lone dissenter, said the immigration judge who denied
asylum overlooked "Kimumwe's unrefuted testimony that the
officers who arrested him made it clear he was arrested for
being gay, not for having sex."
Heaney also
pointed to Mugabe's vow that Zimbabwe would do
"everything in its power" to combat homosexuality. "Our
country ought not sanction the return of an openly gay man
to a country whose leader has vowed to rid the country
of homosexuals," Heaney wrote. (Advocate.com)
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