British authorities were set to deport a gay man to Nigeria on Tuesday night, despite fears he will be targeted and attacked on arrival due to his sexual orientation.
The man, identified only as Oyekunle for his own safety, moved to London four years ago and claimed asylum due to the persecution of the LGBT community in his native Nigeria.
He is set to be deported alongside a hundred others on a chartered flight leaving for Nigeria and Ghana from Stansted Airport this week. Speaking exclusively to RT, Oyekunle said he could not go back to Nigeria because friends and relatives had started harassing him due to his sexuality. The situation had become so unsafe he was forced to flee.
“I can’t go back. When I go back they will kill me,” he said on the phone from Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre.
Campaigners from the Unity Centre, an asylum seekers’ support charity, are now urging supporters to call on the Home Office with Oyenkunle’s case number and complain about his deportation.
“I talked to him about five minutes ago… he’s feeling depressed, he’s not eating… he’s got medication for [post traumatic stress disorder], there’s a lot of medical conditions around him,” a friend of Oyenkunle named Joshua told RT UK.
“He’s feeling suicidal.”
The Unity Centre said the Home Office never granted Oyekunle a full interview and sent notifications to the wrong address. Other sources told RT the man had “been thrown out and was sleeping rough” before authorities detained him and scheduled him for deportation. Campaigners also said his case is in breach of Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which grants “the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
They accused Prime Minister Theresa May of cozying up to President Donald Trump during her Washington visit last week. “I was there on the day Margaret Thatcher opened her door to P.W. Botha while Nelson Mandela languished in a prison cell,” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote in an open letter to May.
“Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party were on the wrong side of history then – just as Theresa May and her Conservative Party are on the wrong side of history today.”
