Rainbows Across Borders LGBT Asylum Seekers Choir leads the way at Croydon’s first PrideFest
Photo author’s own.
Croydon is preparing to celebrate its first , to be held in Surrey Street on Sunday 28th August. I visited , Croydon’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) asylum seekers chorus, whose members will be leading the parade along with Wayne Trakas-Lawlor, Croydon’s first openly gay mayor, to talk about the part its singers will play. apart from central London’s well-established , which was held this year on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th June.
(RAB) is a voluntary self-help group for LGBT asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution by oppressive homophobic/transphobic regimes. It was set up in 2013 to support members to make friends, build confidence and share their stories in a safe space during the asylum process. Members felt that singing together would be therapeutic and cohesive and started the Rainbows Across Borders chorus.
Chorus members come from countries including Gambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Pakistan, the US, Nigeria and Afghanistan. As member Herbert Bulindi explains in our interview on , “Each member of the group has an individual story to tell and we do take time to share these stories in the group and in our meetings. They’ve gone through horrific regimes of homophobia in their countries of origin and some have been traumatised for a large part of their lives before finally coming out and coming into an environment like the UK where they are free and able to live their lives as they should be”.
RAB is supported by members who have already been granted leave to stay and from the wider LGBT community including , (the Campaign for Homosexual Equality) and the . Catherine Pestano, a director of , helped launch the choir and her co-director Anne Crump leads relaxation sessions at the group’s monthly meetings.
A leading supporter is Ray Harvey-Amer, human rights activist and LGBT campaigner with (Croydon Area Gay Society) and . Ray served as a nurse in the Royal Navy from 1957 to ’62 on HMS Blake and HMS Maidstone, and at the Royal Naval Hospitals in Portsmouth, Plymouth and Hong Kong. He led in 1999 for gay veterans and with his partner Mike Harvey set up some of the first organisations to support HIV sufferers in the 1980s. His photos from his navy service form part of the which includes the works of (), the radical Croydon psychologist who was the first in Britain to write about homosexuality as a normal sex life.
As Ray emphasizes, is the result of the work of many LGBT campaigners over the years: “If those foundations hadn’t been laid, we wouldn’t be celebrating this month”. Additionally, in the light of continuing persecution of LGBT people, including a in which over forty people were arrested and humiliated whilst in detention, Ray says that “what we are doing on 28th August is not just for Croydon, it’s to let the rest of the world know that elsewhere things are different”. Herbert adds that RAB “has dedicated the performance to all people still being persecuted and in hope that the message gets around”.
RAB gave a powerful performance at Croydon’s singing the civil rights anthem ‘ and wearing the pink triangle worn by gay men and symbols of other groups persecuted during the Holocaust. Close to the anniversary of Ugandan LGBT activist murder, Herbert explains that the RAB sang “to remember that this sort of dehumanisation should not actually take place and while we celebrate and sing and chant, we put in our memories those who that were before us and lived through the struggle and have gone through numerous episodes of persecution including the genocides in Rwanda and other places in Europe as well”.
Herbert explains how the pink triangle, , was reclaimed by LGBT campaigners. “We took it up as a symbol of our own struggles, trying to use something that is used against you and talk about it positively so that you don’t hold that stigma”. Ray recounts how LGBT campaigners marched under the pink triangle at the first Pride events. “We had buses from Scotland, from Wales, from Ireland and they all came to London, originally 500, then 1000, then it grew and grew to 100,000 over the years”. Today, Pride events take place globally and here in Croydon the pink triangle is displayed alongside the rainbow flag on the poster.
RAB has sung at Pride events across the country and at Croydon minster, at Big Girls Blouse at Stanley Halls, at a screening of a documentary about trafficking, at at London Southbank University and at events at their Croydon base, the . The group recently joined Europe’s longest standing LGBT choir, , to raise awareness of homophobic hate crime. Herbert says that the group receives many invitations which “we have to turn down because of limited resources […] most of our members do not have the right to work so they will have issues footing their fares to places”.
Ray explains that many members have had to conceal their sexual orientation in their countries of origin. This means that when facing questions from Home Office officials such as ‘how do I know that you’re a lesbian, how do I know that you’re gay – you got married, right?’, they find it difficult to explain that they have had to conform. Being part of the chorus gives them the confidence “to feel strong to present their case”. Herbert describes the chorus as “very therapeutic, because having gone through torture or homophobia and mistrust, all of a sudden you can come together as a collective and strut your stuff. It’s very amazing”.
RAB will be singing the song ‘Amazing Pride’ at the first on Sunday 28th August and invites Croydon “to line up with us and parade with us all the way to Surrey Street, where there’ll be stalls and music and dance and you can hear the voices of the chorus of “.
