The Home Office has granted refugee status to a prominent Nigerian LGBT activist, ending a 13-year battle over her right to remain in the UK. Aderonke Apata, 50, says she knew she was gay from the age of 16 and was persecuted in Nigeria. She has been recognised internationally for her human rights work, and recently received Attitude magazine’s Pride award. Apate arrived in the UK in 2004 but did not immediately claim asylum on the grounds of her sexuality. Until 2010, lesbian, gay and bisexual asylum seekers were often forcibly removed to their home countries if it was deemed safe for them to “live discreetly”.

In 2012 she filed an asylum claim but was considered by the Home Office to be lying about being in a lesbian relationship. Apate appealed, but was told by the judge: “What is believed is that you have presented yourself as a lesbian solely to establish a claim for international protection in an attempt to thwart your removal … It is considered that your actions are not genuine and simply a cynical way of gaining status in the UK.” A new appeal was scheduled for late July. Apate’s legal team gave notice that 11 prominent witnesses, including the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and the Lib Dem peer Liz Barker, would be attending. The Home Office requested an adjournment and then earlier this month sent a letter to Apate saying officials had decided to grant her refugee status.(theguardian)…[+]

Traffickers used beatings and the threat of shooting to force more than 100 refugees, including children who could not swim, to jump into heavy seas off the coast of Yemen last week, survivors have said. At least 50 people were killed. The incident is the latest in a series in which hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees have died.

Survivors contacted in Yemen told the Guardian that crewmembers armed with AK47s told around 120 men, women and children that they would not be able to land them on beaches in Yemen and forced them to jump into the water while still at least 1km offshore at dawn on Tuesday. The boat had left Bosaso, a port in Somaliland on the Gulf of Aden, around 16 hours earlier, the survivors said. Fifty-one refugees, mostly Somalis trying to reach Europe, have been confirmed dead, and the toll is expected to rise.

“The smugglers told us it was very risky to approach the shore as Yemeni authorities had arrested smugglers there. So they told us to jump. Some people shouted and begged the smugglers to take us closer, but they refused and started beating people with sticks. They had AK47s, so everyone was afraid to argue, and people started jumping into the sea,” Abdirahim Ilmi Aano, 25, a labourer in Bosasso, told the Guardian.(theguardian)…[+]

Politicians from all sides have rounded on Donald Trump for failing explicitly to condemn white supremacy groups or use the term domestic terrorism after a woman was killed when a car smashed into anti-racism protesters at the weekend. The US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the death.

On Saturday the president condemned hatred and violence “on many sides” in his remarks, but did not directly single out the white supremacists, whose attempt to hold a major rally in Charlottesville, Virginia resulted in the governor, Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, calling a state of emergency. Disorder including clashes with counterprotesters left more than 30 injured.

The woman who was killed by the car that ploughed into counter-protesters was named as 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a legal assistant who had repeatedly championed civil rights issues on social media. A 20-year-old man, James Fields, of Maumee, Ohio, has been charged with her murder. On Sunday photographs taken earlier on Saturday surfaced that showed Fields standing with a neo-Nazi group and holding a shield emblazoned with a far-right emblem.(theguardian)…[+]