Seeking Asylum as HIV Positive (The New Ugly Face of Racism)

June 20 is designated by the UN as a day to mark refugees’ plight. Unfortunately, rather than highlighting refugees plight by telling it as it is, without fear or favour, those agencies dealing with refugee issues along with human rights groups, prefer for the most part, to employ soft words against those states, especially, the rich nations of the West, that violate the rights of refugees with impunity. As I have run the gamut of what it means to be a refugee ever since I wandered into the Great Lakes Region from the Horn of Africa 41 months ago, I am in a unique position to witness the veracity of the saying that unless the one who’s trampled upon screams, no neighbor will volunteer to assist. Whatever the theme for this year’s refugee day or whatever flowery rhetoric is going to be showered on behalf of us, I know for sure that the degrading and inhumane treatment meted out to me and my family under the pretext of “Refugee and special Humanitarian assistance” will not be mentioned anywhere. For fear of risking further discrimination, even reprisal, most refugees who suffered like us are also reluctant to tell their traumatic experience. Well, with the full encouragement of my beloved wife, I’ve decided to change that. However, in order to protect our kids, I will withhold my real name and where exactly I originated from. I would also like to inform you that the story you read here is gleaned from a memoir I will soon submit for publication whereby I recorded what I experienced and noted as a refugee under the title “Should I jettison my wife, abandon my kids?” A question posed to the high and mighty Western sense of value. Meanwhile, not to miss out this opportune moment designated for castaways like us from failed states, I hereby present a tiny section from my story. It’s a real one narrated by a real refugee.

Telling a tale most shudder to tell

For want of space and time, I won’t tell you what forced us to seek refuge and how we managed to secure asylum in Uganda. Suffice it to say that despite being granted asylum, I didn’t feel safe wherefore I applied for a durable solution by way of resettlement to a third country. Since the mills of the various refugee agencies grind exceedingly slowly, I also sought the solution directly. Thankfully, an opportunity to that effect materialized from Australia through one of my old friend who’s been transformed from a refugee status to a citizen of that affluent and “civilized” nation of commonwealth. Thus, he proposed my case so that I am granted a “special humanitarian visa” attaching the application form what I filled earlier from this end.

The application known as form 842 enumerates in its front page Australian core values. Listed among them are; respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, a spirit of egalitarianism that embraces mutual respect, fair play and compassion for those in need. Of course, a snag was also inserted to render all these values meaningless in the “pursuit of the public good.” Elsewhere in the form is written “Australia enjoys some of the best health standards in the world. In order to maintain these standards you must satisfy the health requirements specified in the Migration Regulations. At the footnote, it’s stated “The Department is authorized to collect information on this form under the Migration Act 1958.The information on this form, including the results of any test for Human Immunodeficiency Virus/HIV/will be used to assess your health for an Australian visa. A positive HIV or other test result will not necessarily lead to a visa being denied.” With no sugarcoating, this means mandatory test for HIV. As we’ve known our serostatus since 2005, my wife and I agonized over this.

We’re a discordant couple; me being negative while my wife’s positive. Tragically, our kids are also positive. What makes it tragic is not their being positive. It’s the international community’s lip service and insincerity to stamp out stigmatization. Otherwise, we’re a living testimony that HIV’s no longer a life threatening problem. Anyway, as there’s no problem on the merits of my case to be granted visa, my application was accepted whereupon we were slated for interview and medical examination.

Prior to my interview, I disclosed our serostatus via email to my friend and proposer in Brisbane. He called me at the wee hours the next morning and after commiserating with me, told me that my application is hopeless. When I pointed out to him that the form says there’s no denial of visa on the basis of serostatus, he told me that’s a hoax. I challenged him further by reminding him the numerous international obligations Australia signed. He said they don’t give a hoot how many international rules they flout. When it comes to HIV, their obstinacy is worse than---here he used the derogatory word we often employ to depict the regime we both fled from.

Anyway, after having sailed easily through the interview, we were referred to the staff of International Organization for Migration/IOM/ for what’s supposed to be pre counseling before the mandatory test. If you imagined a one-to-one or private session for each refugee, forget it. All of us refugees from the Horn of Africa to the Great Lakes region were made to congregate under a tarpaulin for counseling in line with the principle of “best practice.” Accordingly, we were informed that we can refuse the mandatory test with a warning that refusal to undergo the test will jeopardize our immigration process. We were also made to sign several documents to this effect a copy of which we were denied. After the test, I went back to look for the Australian Migration officer who interviewed us to disclose our status orally and in writing. He thanked me for coming forward. However; he told me that in light of this new phenomenon that the decision will not be made by him. I briefly mentioned in the letter as to how we’ve been dealing with the problem ever since we knew our status and that it’s only my wife and my first born kid who’re on ARV since the CD4 count of my second kid was still high. I also expressed my hope that the unsavory practice of the mandatory test was to really “assess” our health, but not to exclude. All this happened in March 2009.

“Humanitarian” visa trickling in

Towards the end of April, fellow refugees among whom some were my compatriots who had been processing their immigration to Australia asked me about the progress of my case since all of them had been contacted by their proposers concerning their imminent resettlement. I evaded their curiosity by stammering that since we’re going to different cities, processing time would also be varied. During the medical examination, these same people had witnessed my underage kids being X-rayed differently from other kids of the same age in the cramped clinic on Jinja road designated by IOM. In fact, some were unable to restrain themselves from asking as to why our kids are X-rayed differently. At any rate, the “humanitarian” visa began to arrive officially in May from Australia. Therefore, I emailed the Australian High Commission in Nairobi to inquire a decision on my case. I was told that the results of our medical examination had been cleared wherefore we would soon be informed of a decision on our visa. A few days later, however, I received an email from the High Commission that the previous information was incorrect whereby I was informed that it’s only me, the main applicant who had been cleared medically whereas results on my family’s medical history was still under assessment. I was therefore advised not to consider the case as finalized. Then in July 2009, I received a letter under a heading “Invitation to Comment” from the Immigration Section of the High Commission. The letter stated that my family did not meet the health requirement and that I am invited to comment if there are “compassionate or compelling circumstances” applicable to my case. I was also given an “opportunity” to put forward any information which may lead to a decision to waive the health requirement and submit it within 49 days. Attached with this invitation were also the findings of the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth/MOC/. The MOC confirmed what I had been saying all along that my family poses no danger to public health since they don’t carry any contagious disease that can be transmitted by air or casual contact. He acknowledged that their condition caused by HIV infection is stable on medication. He added, however, that they would pose a significant cost to the community due to their likely requirement of ongoing specialist care and treatment. While he put the figure for my wife’s health care at $240, 000, he deduced that my kids incur the Australian community $250,000 each. This “findings” by the MOC is a mutatis mutandis report with no consideration to the different and individual aspect of their medical history. It didn’t even bother to take stock of their different age and the medical record I submitted whereby it’s clearly indicated that my second kid is still able to do without the ARV. Yet, almost the same figure for all of them to ultimately deny the “humanitarian” visa on the grounds of not fulfilling “public interest criterion.” Be that as it may, I decided to play along and lodged my appeal for waiver on the grounds of “compassionate and compelling” circumstances.

I had never been subjected to a mental anguish before as I was when writing that appeal, not even in the concentration camp where I languished, back home, for one solid year. Writing that appeal was equally humiliating as subjecting my family to the indignities of mandatory test for HIV. Anyway, it took a year of hide and seek game and a frequent insistence on my part that also included two letters to the Minister for Immigration, Senator Chris Evans, for the Australian government that professes “fair play” to finally rest my case. Replying on behalf of the Minister, Mr.Matt Kennedy, Assistant Secretary for Family and Health Policy expressed his regret on the significant health condition of my family that made it difficult for them to grant us a permanent visa. Cocksure that my African intelligence would not help me to figure out between Australia’s nominal intake of HIV positive refugees and its discriminatory common practice, the learned Kennedy attempted to soothe me with a phrase “that HIV positive people can and do migrate to Australia.” He “graciously” informed me too that unless there is a “change in my family circumstances” it’s impossible for me to get the “coveted” visa. How did we get to this point to be looked down this low? I grappled with that question in my upcoming memoir.

HIV mystified; Refugee issues traded off in realpolitik

Although, not for the same reason Alex de Waal described it in his book “AIDS and Power; why there is no political crisis—yet” about those family members who’re forced to abandon activism such as rallies, protests or discussing politics due to the home-care they provide to their bedridden HIV positive next of kin, I too dropped everything since the snub by the Aussies to unravel the mystery that makes HIV unique from other health problems. Accordingly, my “citizen’s” research led me to conclude by agreeing with that Irish playwright, George B. Shaw who once quipped that “Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.” In the absence of a solution to a problem, many come up with their own hypothesis; some rationale, some lunatic. Yet, until a foolproof solution is found, what’s reasonable for one can be pure lunacy for someone else. Initially, we were told that HIV is a disease suffered by gays, first diagnosed in the USA. Then, all of a sudden, the scourge was said to have originated from Africa. Now that the HIV prevalence and incidence rate is higher in Africa than elsewhere, many non-Africans tend to agree with this hypothesis. What they always ignore is wherever there is injustice, instability, abysmal ignorance and abject poverty, diseases find fertile ground to spread like a bushfire. That’s the reason the HIV prevalence rate is higher among blacks than whites in America. That’s why H1N1 or swine flu first showed its lethal force on an Aborigine man the moment it broke out in Australia. That’s why Louis Pasteur, that father of virology’s immortal words still echo whereby he said “The microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything.”

The other factor that mystifies HIV is its main mode of transmission; sex! Bearing in mind the dissenting view of Dr.Peter Duesberg, since been made pariah for manifesting a healthy dissent with whom I empathize to some extent since I am HIV negative despite numerous wild encounters which I enumerated in my upcoming memoir to the distaste of those with holier-than-thou attitude/HIV cannot be demystified before men and women shake off their neurosis about sex, straight and otherwise, and act naturally and freely without any Puritanism. A free human being usually has the ability to make the right decision, even in matters of sex. Probably that’s the reason we don’t get to hear about HIV infection on freaks like the Austrian man, Josef Fritzl who held captive his own daughter in a bunker to physically assault, sexually abuse and rape her for 24 years while in between having fun with commercial sex workers in Thailand unlike hapless Africans who don’t get the opportunity to enjoy and abuse sex on an international level. Or like the Australian doctor who used to work for World Health Organization /WHO/ in Philippines, Marcus Hodge, who was caught red handed while molesting a 12 year old boy in Manila/www.Inquirer.net 05/12/2009/not to mention their “men of God” who turned out to be notorious pedophiles. In short, despite their overindulgence and abuse in sexual behavior wherever they travel with their immense means of traveling far and wide, they invariably get away with it while we Africans are stuck with HIV. Could it be that we’re being shortchanged on this matter too as we’ve been shortchanged so many times in history in so many other issues?

Anyway, when it comes to sexual behavior, it’s axiomatic that we members of the black race are regarded implicitly by the white world as wanton like wild animals. I therefore don’t buy the Australian government’s excuse for denying us visa on the grounds of “significant cost.” After all, the Australian government through what it termed AusAID committed itself to meet the global challenge in combating the scourge through funding by raising a total of $600 million. Of course; one has the right to doubt this as another lip service never to be fulfilled. Lip service or not, it’s imperative to mention one of the international commitments Australia signed in Paris in 1994. It’s called the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/GIPA/which recognizes the importance of including people living with the virus. Using this sort of smokescreen for publicity stunt, the politicians of that country hosted an international AIDS conference in 2007.

Meanwhile, members of the “international community” and rights groups were busy lobbying America to lift its travel ban on HIV positive people. I congratulate them on their success. I hope the Obama administration is sincere in lifting this barbaric ban. I hope so too that it’s not going to employ a cheap trickery like Australia does to exclude HIV positive people while ostensibly accommodating them. I didn’t bring this up just to spoil the show. I heard about a curious rejection of refugees’ case recently when they reached the physical examination level after undergoing the mandatory test for HIV. When these hapless refugees, also from the Horn of Africa, appeared for the physical to process their resettlement to America, they were told that their case is rejected. Of course, my source who observed everything since he was also processing with them had no means of knowing that they were rejected on the basis of serostatus. Still, one cannot help but doubt. It also tells you that there’s neither privacy nor confidentiality for refugees.

Speaking about confidentiality reminds me of one young couple also from the Horn who were processing with us to be resettled in Australia. The lady was pregnant during the process. Unfortunately, she also tested positive while her husband turned out to be negative. When they were rejected the young man got furious and started blaming his wife and soon became public knowledge among the refugee community. Of course, IOM prides itself in giving post counseling in accordance with “best practice” principle. As these couple were not aware of their serostatus previously, nothing could prepare them to deal with their new situation. Certainly, not with a mandatory test as callous as this one. Meanwhile, Mr.Keneddy unabashedly claims that “HIV positive people can and do migrate” to Australia. Most likely, the baby of this young mother is HIV negative. That means, it’s only the mother who’s positive and therefore doesn’t cost much. Yet, Australia had also rejected these ones and in the process turned their life hell, especially, the mother’s life.

Like I said the issue is not cost. Even if it is, we can ask why or what made the treatment and care of HIV expensive? The answer: greed. From the very beginning, to win the patent right and rip off the huge profit, unethical behavior and ruthlessness was employed on the part of the scientific community involved in the AIDS industry. While it was a French scientist named Luc Montagnier who discovered the retrovirus that causes AIDS which he dubbed Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus/LAP/, an American scientist to whom this discovery was sent for review claimed that he was the one who discovered the virus which he first named HTLV III. The American was Robert Charles Gallo. This scientist’s claim immediately sparked off a diplomatic row between the US and French government which President Reagan and the French Premier Jack Chirac settled amicably. Then came the story of AZT first discovered as a cancer drug. It didn’t work, though. Therefore, it was consigned to the shelf for over two decades. When HIV appeared AZT was revived as a life prolonging drug causing unspeakable misery on those who took it until discontinued. Amazingly, while the cost of production for this drug was five dollars, it was sold as high as five hundred dollars. Nothing much is different on the current ARVs prescribed for HIV positive people. If you read the heart rending book titled “Genocide by Denial; How Profiteering from HIV/AIDS killed Millions” by Dr. Peter Mugyenyi, you will come closer to unraveling the mystery that surrounds the cost of HIV treatment. It’s a pity that I was unable to come across a review on this book except one by a Zimbabwean named Tony Geoffrey Owana on The Zimbabwe Guardian. In my opinion, the book has not only been written by a medical doctor who knows the genesis of HIV/AIDS in Uganda, but also by a natural storyteller with a wide range of knowledge that makes you doubt that the doctor has also been trained in international laws. I strongly suspect that had it been written by a white person from the West, it’d have been acclaimed widely. Had I not been a man of humble means, I would also present it to the cold and calculating Australian officials in a bid to humanize them. Now let us turn to one segment of refugee issues; resettlement.

According to a 2001 UNHCR handbook for parliamentarians to guide them on international law in which ironically an Australian named Mr. Jim McKiernan contributed, parliamentarians of member states to the refugee convention have an obligation to raise the awareness of their constituents to share the burden of refugees that often poor nations are forced to shoulder. Neither on this handbook, nor on subsequent guidelines, is it provided that rich nations can go to poorer nations riddled with the burden of refugee problem to cherry pick only those whom they think are fit and healthy, leaving behind those vulnerable ones to a doomed continent like Africa. This is at best violating international humanitarian law, at the worst, fascistic.

If you visit the Australian Federation of AIDS Organization/AFAO/ website and click for Migration inquiry, you’ll come up with a name, Mr. Lachlan Riches. He had an interesting thing to say about an Australian who was living in Germany by being married with a national of that country. Both of them were HIV positive. At some stage, the Australian wanted to go back to his country. Guess what, he was asked to lodge for a waiver on the health requirement since he was HIV positive, elderly and with lots of other problems that’d cause a significant cost to the Australian community! If this is not a recipe for fascism, what then is fascism? Gassing people outright in a gas chamber or denying them food in a concentration camp? Fascism also went down in history for its systematic elimination of Gypsies, social misfits such as alcoholics, prostitutes and disabled people as useless and non-productive.

At any rate, UNHCR guidelines emphasizes on those vulnerable groups to be given priority on matters of resettlement as a way of durable solution to their plight. The trouble is as the refugee convention was adopted initially against the backdrop of the cold war where the rival superpowers, especially, the West used it as a tool to woo defectors, it failed miserably to achieve its humanitarian purpose by giving protection and durable solution to asylum seekers and refugees. Therefore, notorious racists such as Pauline Hanson who once advocated for the closure of Australian borders on “diseased South Africans with AIDS” are still able to feed on the inherent nature of Australian’s racism and bigotry. That Australians suffer from this barbarism is amply demonstrated by one of their own, John Pilger, in a book titled “The New Rulers of the World.” This has been augmented by an insightful article on “The Australian” Newspaper on February 7, 2007 under the title “Flattened by a falafel.” This is not to say that their peers in Europe and elsewhere are any better than them. The way the Italians have been persecuting immigrants and the way their government colluded with a notorious dictator such as Gaddafi to forcibly repatriate asylum seekers to where they face danger, leaves no doubt in ones mind that there are many miles to be covered in the struggle for human rights. Even Switzerland, the seat of international rights groups, came up with a draconian legislation by prohibiting its citizens not to marry “irregular migrants and rejected asylum seekers.”/Refer to Amnesty International 2010 report on the World State of Human Rights/. In a nutshell; unless we delude ourselves, nations like Australia never extend their hand on the grounds of humanitarianism. After all, the immigration’s motto is “Enriching Australia through the well managed entry and settlement of people.”

Regarding Australia’s projection of “the best health standards in the world,” Pilger exposed it as a myth in a chapter he titled “The chosen ones” in the book I mentioned above. In it, he tells us to what extent the Australian politicians went to cover up their egregious discrimination of the indigenous people, the Aborigines, to host the Sydney Olympic in 2000 by showing casing Cathy Freeman, a world-class runner and Aborigine while the rest of her people went near blinded by trachoma. If you think that this is outdated information, I refer you to an Aljazeera program, Witness Special televised on May 24, 2010 under the title “Crossing the line.” I saw in that program the indigenous people walking barefoot with a leg that looks like jigger infested like Ugandan villagers.

Why I feel humanitarian agencies and rights group are not doing enough

First, I would like to express my awareness on the logistical and financial constraints of these institutions to tackle the myriad problem of people like me. Also I came across with many dedicated people to humanitarian and human rights causes. Had it not been for their commitment, our life would have been much harder. Yet, there’re those that shocked me and sent me into a quandary by asking “what if this is the norm the whole institution carries out its duty?”

Last year, I was invited in a workshop prepared by Amnesty International to mark World Refugee Day. All the speakers came well prepared with their notes and presented it to us refugees with due respect except one; the Senior Protection Officer from UNHCR. He was supposed to speak on “The solution to refugee problems and the challenges.” Though he had no note for us, he presented himself with eloquence and impeccable English. Trouble was, instead of informing us how to tackle the problems we face in search of a durable solution, he told us in a very discouraging way that resettling countries always demand “clean cases” in terms of health. He also gave the impression that all refugees in search of durable solution are in reality seeking to migrate to the greener pastures and thus habitually lie about their cases and their family relationship. During question-answer time, I raised to the issue of mandatory test of HIV for resettlement and what UNHCR’s doing about it. He simply shrugged off my question that nations have the right to come up with their own standard. He appeared as one who never heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent instruments nations adopted as a common standard in dealing with human beings irrespective of their status. To my mind, the gentleman seemed to have suffered with an occupational disease stemmed out of long years of dealing with bona fide and bogus refugee cases.

Speaking about this mandatory test brings me to the other actor; IOM. Of course, IOM posted on numerous occasions about the undesirability of the mandatory test conducted for migration. But is that enough? Has IOM ever conducted a research in line with its mission as to what happens to those refugees banned from migrating solely on the basis of serostatus? Does IOM honestly believe it’s “post counseling” is adequate for this people to withstand the stigma they suffer afterwards which led some to commit suicide? I heard a couple of cases to this effect, not to speak of abandonment and family break up. So long as UNHCR and IOM are unable to provide answers to these questions, they remain in my mind as exulted institutions of human trafficking.

I am also highly dissatisfied with the rights group works on the abuse perpetrated on HIV positive people. If one takes a careful look on Amnesty’s report for this year on HIV, it’s only nations like South Africa, Swaziland and the like that are mentioned as lacking. Emboldened, therefore, many nations are readying to come up with draconian legislations for mandatory test on their borders. I heard news to this effect on BBC Network Africa a couple of months ago that East African nations are planning to conduct mandatory test on their borders. In what seems to be a testimony to Alex de Waal’s observation whereby he said “Uganda’s success in reducing HIV/AIDS has been more celebrated than analysed” this nation too is about to regress by singling out HIV transmission for criminal purpose.

Redefining the term “Refugee”

After experiencing what I experienced and noted as a refugee, I chose to discard the official definition of the term refugee and replace it with the following.

R—Rooted out

E---Exiled

F---Frightened

U---Unwelcome

G---Globally shunned

E---Expendable to capricious politics

E---Eternally endangered

Parting on a happier note

For those of you who’ve shown the stamina and patience to plod in this cumbersome writing of mine, I would like to tell you that I don’t always take a gloomy view of life. There’re moments that I get really happy. One of them was when Germany thrashed Australia 4-0 in the ongoing World cup in South Africa. I do hope my African brothers from Ghana would deliver the coup de grace to the Aussies and augment my happiness.

A refugee in Uganda from the Horn of Africa

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