Seeking Sanctuary

Haban Sobukwe was 17 years-old when he boarded a plane to flee an abusive home in Malawi. Life in his own country had been difficult. His parents died when he was six and he went to live with his uncle, whose wife was abusive towards him. After his uncle died when he was a teenager, the abuse became sexual as well as mental.

“It was very hard growing up, being abused by somebody who would call a mother or a parent,” he says quietly.

After an incident in which his aunt scalded him with hot water, leaving him scarred, Sobukwe sought help at a local church. The pastor told him he could arrange a free visa to Ireland.

Since his arrival, Sobukwe has experienced another kind of trauma -the trauma of four years living in Direct Provision as a young gay man, unable to work and surrounded by people from countries just as homophobic as the one he fled.

His original application for asylum was rejected and he is currently appealing a decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAC) not to grant him subsidiary protection status. The 21 year-old is terrified to return to Malawi, a country where homophobia is rife and homosexuality in any form is completely illegal.

“Every time talk about Malawi, it’s very hard,” he explains. “Because people can actually beat you to death or kill you for being LGBT. They might even break into your house, and family members might be in danger as well, you know? There is much discrimination.

“The leaders, the politicians, they say, ‘Being gay is like being a dog’. In our country, you can get sentenced to 14 years in prison. wouldn’t want to go back there because I’d be in danger.”

Despite travelling thousands of miles from Malawi, Sobukwe’s Direct Provision centre – Glenvera Hotel in Cork City – carries the same insidious threat of violence. “In the previous centres was in, people never really knew about my sexuality, but when moved to Cork, found a partner. We’ve been together since earlier this year.

“From the time people found out about my sexuality in the hostel, I’ve been struggling with mental health, people being very abusive, getting punched and stuff,” he says sadly.

“A lot of people say things. The people that bother me are mostly the ones from Malawi. don’t really associate with most of them, but there’s a person who is always very abusive. My partner bought me clothes and can’t even dress but they’d say, ‘You’re sleeping with another man to get some stuff’.”

After an incident last summer where a fellow resident punched him in a hallway, Sobukwe says he feels very frightened for his safety. The person who attacked him was staying in the room next door to his on a floor with no security cameras. He was friends with Holman’s roommates and regularly dropped by their room.

“I reported it to the manager and he asked if had any friends could stay with or anywhere could go as was so upset, crying and stuff. So rang my partner and stayed there for a week. The manager told me he was going to change me to a different room downstairs where there are cameras, where I’d feel better, because didn’t feel safe. It took time because there was one person who was supposed to be moving out of the hostel whose place could take. had to go in and out every day to find out if he had left.”

Sobukwe was asked if he wanted to transfer to another centre, but he didn’t want to leave his partner, who lives in Cork City, and he was also studying for an ECDL qualification at the time.

“I struggled a lot to get my room. spoke to NASC (a migrant support organisation) and they wrote a letter for me. was just waiting for his (the centre manager’s) call, gave him my phone number. Then during that week got two warning letters because was not at the centre.”

The day after Sobukwe handed in a second letter from NASC (which he had been waiting for for a month) he was finally placed in a room downstairs, but this has not eliminated his constant anxiety.

“I’m worried now that my new roommate will find out one day that I’m gay and how he might react,” he says. “I have to hide everything.”

Living in an all-male centre – where some sleep four to a room in bunkbeds – means living in an aggressive and tension-filled environment: “You don’t go one week without seeing a Garda car outside. The Guards go there all the time,” he says.

Sobukwe attends a meet-up for LGBT+ people in Cork every week, which provides him some respite from centre life. He also volunteers at NASC and has completed a personal development course for LGBT+ asylum seekers in Dublin’s Outhouse. His face brightens visibly as he tells me about sharing his experiences with people in similar situations.

“I met a lot of people. was very happy, because happened to meet one person who was my best friend (from another centre) and had never known about his sexuality. It was great; we could sit down and talk about the centres and the difficulties.”

One of those difficulties is that ‘house rules’ state residents can only leave a centre for a maximum of three days at a time. Sobukwe says he finds this very restrictive. “Sometimes they say it’s only because they want to see you in there and stuff but if they could be a bit more flexible. If you could just ring them and say, ‘I’m around’, you know?”

He also feels that Direct Provision centres need to be much safer for vulnerable LGBT+ individuals. “My suggestion would be that if people are LGBT+, put them in the same room. Management have to really pay attention to people’s problems. They (the centres) need to be more secure. In our place there’s only cameras downstairs, so it’s not safe.”