A little people power please...
2006-12-03 by Kevvy KHarold Melvin and The Blue Notes – Don’t Leave Me This Way (dim’s re-edit)
Inspired by a slew of cover versions of this classic track over on Joe My God, I thought I’d just add this to a fairly comprehensive list. Taken from the rather good, although rather tastelessy named After The Playboy Mansion mix, this has a couple of extra instrumental minutes tweaked on to heighten its anthemicness.
Anyway, I’m basically using this post as a means of highlighting the plight of a gay Ugandan asylum seeker in the UK who is facing deportation. Some of you may have in the past signed the petitions for another gay Ugandan asylum seeker Moses Kayiza – and although he suffered some set backs from the Home Office along the way – thanks to people’s support and his own determination- Moses got to stay in the UK.
Kizza Musinguzi is now facing a similar threat. He is a Ugandan gay rights activist who was jailed by the Ugandan government for his gay rights work and subjected to four months of torture from May to September 2004. A Government minister in Uganda has even gone as far as writing in a national newspaper, that he “will be crushed” if he returns to Uganda. (Uganda observer May 11th 2006) The Home Office wants to deport him on the grounds that this abuse does not constitute persecution.
During his time in the infamous Harmondsworth Removals Centre, he:
- was abused by staff racially and homophobically as a “nigger” and “batty boy”
- was denied medical treatment for the effects of the torture he recieved in Uganda
- was forced through the asylum system without legal representation
- had his asylum papers and asthma inhaler confiscated
- was subjected me to an unwarranted internal examination, and an attempt to deport him without being served with a removal order.
Please, please take a moment to sign Kizza’s online petition here, check out his activist work in supporting other gay Ugandans here and for more info on the work and campaigns going on against the brutal deportation regime in the UK, check out the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns here.
Download MP3 (0:00min / 0MB)
Comments 
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Signed the petition, grabbed the tune. Thanks!!
signed.
For people who wonder whether this sort of thing works, a mate of mine who came to this country as a teenaged refugee from Kosovo has just won indefinite leave to remain in this country. It has taken years of campaigning, but all those petitions and letters and stuff really do make a difference.