LGBT|LGBTQ |BLOCK13|REFUGEES

The Heart of the Kakuma Block 13 was Buried Yesterday.

She was less than five months old.

LGBTQ refugees are stolen from, beaten, and abused. They are waiting to die.

Her name was Namubiru Patricia Geneva. Everyone called her Covid.

She may look like any other baby, but Baby Covid was set apart. In her short, little life, she endured more than almost any of us. Born in a refugee camp, Kakuma, it’s called, in Kenya. Covid has been attacked since her birth.

She was only three days old when she was hit with tear gas. One hundred forty-nine men, women, children, and yes, babies were assaulted with tear gas. By the humanitarian agency sworn to protect them. The United Nations Refugee Agency.

The residents of Block 13 were there to beg for help. They got tear gas.

The place where Covid lived with her mother, Kyazike Reginah, and many others is not much of a place at all. It is ramshackle and rundown and neglected and ignored. People crowd into a room, huddled together for warmth, maybe comfort, they try to sleep.

But sleep is elusive in Kakuma.

Their home is part of an area known as Block 13. They are part of a group of people who have been exiled, tossed away like garbage, because of their truth. The community of Block 13 is LGBTQ people and their children. They were put in Block 13 together, with the claims they would be safer.

They are not safe.

There is a great deal of poverty, homelessness, crime, rape, starvation, and illness here. It gets worse every day. The UNHCR has not shown up since they dumped everyone here. The UNHCR or United Nations Refugee Agency is the entity charged with, by their very name, give Refuge.

There Is No Refuge for These Refugees!

No one has Refuge when they have to sleep outside with no blanket because the weather ruined your sleeping area.

No one has Refuge when they are viciously attacked, sent to the hospitals, shamed, shunned, and spit upon by the other refugees at Kakuma. Along with the police. Even their countries where they were born will make no room for the people of Block 13.

No one has Refuge when they cannot escape.

Everyone in Block 13 loved baby Covid. She was their unique flower, their Queen; Baby Covid was a warrior. If she had lived in America, we would call her a hero.

Her people call her Covid. Her people called her precious. Her people called her a flower and an angel.

Her death needs to matter. It needs to mean something. This baby was tear-gassed by the agency who is supposed to protect her when she was three days old. Now she is gone, and the UNHCR has blood on their hands.

Outside of Block 13, for all eternity, she will be a statistic to the UNHRC. I want to ask every one of you to help me make sure she is the statistic of the beginning of freedom.

America, this is our future, as things stand right now. I refuse to stand by and watch that. Free Block 13. I will tell their stories until they are free.

The stories I am sharing here were told to me by real people living in Block 13. We are communicating daily and I am telling you who they are and what they need the world to know. I am using names where I have permission.

Thank you for taking the time to be here. I appreciate you! If you’re wondering who on earth I am, well, you can see a bit of that right here.

For more on Block 13, read this.