Campaign to secure Bristol LGBT refugee support group

A project supporting LGBT asylum seekers and refugees needs to raise £5,700 to secure its future.

Bristol Pride Without Borders has successfully helped 23 members in their asylum claims and said it would be "tragic to close the project".

The group has started a fundraising campaign for "this vital support".

Under current rules, people claiming asylum on the basis of their sexuality must convince the Home Office they are in danger if they return home.

The group said it had not been able to raise funding through "traditional channels", such as trusts, foundations and other funding bodies.

It said it had enough funding to last until the end of this year but would have to close in 2021 if the money is not raised.

The project helps group members in their asylum applications or appeals in the court.

It also runs a weekly support group which provides basic needs such as food, shelter, medicine, digital devices and data, advice and wellbeing services.

Syrian asylum seeker Raeida, who is currently being supported by the group, said: "I have a death threat in my country and I came here to feel safe.

"I don't have family. They [the group] are my family and they make me feel always like 'you're accepted', the feeling I was looking for all my life.

"Once the Covid problem started and the lockdown, I was so anxious. Being with this group, it was so helpful because if we need food, or if we need any help, they would help us."

One of the 23 people who was helped by the group said she "now felt safe" - Aliya, not her real name, came to the UK in 2018.

She said: "The group welcomed me and I started to become more confident. When we arrive, we don't know the system.

"So many asylum seekers are afraid. The way they interview you - it makes you scared. They asked me 'are you a Muslim?'

"I was so depressed, I had nightmares but now things are better because I've had so much help from that group."

She said she has now been able to study beauty therapy and her aim is to become a midwife.

"I want to be somebody, to work hard if I can get a job," she said.

"LGBT asylum seekers have to hide their sexual orientation or gender identity in their country in fear of abuse and torture.

"Once they come here they must prove the very same thing they had to hide to ensure their safety and future," Bristol Pride Without Borders said in a statement.

Tom Daly, from Bristol Refugee Rights, said LGBT asylum seekers and refugees faced "a lot of challenges".

"Most people arrive alone and many people are traumatised by their past experiences of violence and persecution."

He said the people they helped had no legal right to work and lived on £37.75 a week "in often crammed houses with other individuals who can be homophobic".

"If you live somewhere where you have to keep your sexual orientation and your relationships secret on pain of death, finding evidence of that past is really hard," he said.