“Living in an asylum camp as an LGBT person has proved to be a challenge and being a person of colour has not made it any easier. I have had other asylum seekers from Middle East openly confronting me if I think of myself as a man or woman. I told them I feel like a human being and walked away. I have also had a woman from Nigeria asking me why I don’t like to make up and why I should always act like a man. I have asked what she meant act like a man and she told me that my facial impression, and I rarely smile. I asked should I always be smiling under the circumstances and previous torments that I have suffered back home. I still carry the pain of my past.
I have met a nurse at the camp who asked me where I was from. I told her, and she bluntly said to me that I would never have asylum in this country, why would I come all the way from southern Africa and who had told me that I could get asylum here. And I quote (even people like you who think it is easier to get asylum in Finland will never get, Finland is no longer sympathetic to anyone). People like me I asked. Yes she said people like me. It was really shocking to see a member of the staff who are suppose to be trained treating me like this. As if that was not bad enough a fellow African LGBT person went to see her complaining about a toothache. She only saw her after a week and send her to a doctor and wrote a note to the doctor that the girl had a headache. She only got to know of it when the doctor asked how long she had the headache for and she answered I have no headache I have a toothache for a week. She had to wait another week until she could not take it anymore and went to the reception crying that is only the way she finally managed to get the appointment to the dentist. They need to do something about this nurse but of course we don’t have a voice. I have experienced fights, which broke out between one Iraq LGBT boy and his roommate only to find that the LGBT boy was the one told he had anger issues.
I pray that one day they consider having just a reception centre for queer people only. It would be much easier to have your meal in peace and not afraid that if people may not want to sit on the same table with you or share the elevator as has been in my case. I have come a long way and endured all types of pain from mental to physical I refuse to die here.”
An Anonymous Asylum Seeker