<<Print>>A 41-year-old Ghanaian lesbian seeking asylum in Israel for fear of losing her life after returning has been denied her request. Mavis Amponsah, 41, claimed she had been persecuted in Ghana after having a 20-year relationship with a woman. The Interior Ministry’s advisory committee on refugees denied the asylum request having established Amponsah was not truthful.
Committee chairman Avi Himi, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, wrote in the denial decision that Amponsah’s statements “show that she consciously and rationally adopted a lesbian lifestyle. This wasn’t an orientation she had had all her life, forming an integral part of her identity, so her claims of a clear sexual orientation are unacceptable.”
The committee based its decision, among other things, on interviews that were held with Amponsah in English – although she does not speak the language – which indicated she had had a relationship with a man in the past and that “since arriving in Israel she didn’t meet women or act on her alleged preference.”
Himi also wrote in the arguments for denying Amponsah’s request that “as for the applicant’s claim regarding her sexual identity, she didn’t claim she felt a physical or romantic attraction to women at all. She says she turned from ‘straight’ to ‘lesbian’ following her disappointment with the relationship with her first partner, who cheated on her with another woman.”
For the past five months Amponsah has been held in jail after not renewing her residence permit on time, due to a misunderstanding, according to her. She was released earlier this week after court proceedings.
Amponsah entered Israel as a tourist in December 2013. That month she filed a request for asylum.
This is not the first time Israel has denied an asylum seeker’s request on the basis of sexual orientation. Asylum seekers from countries like Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea and Morocco have asked Israel not to send them back to states where their life would be endangered due to persecution. But their requests have been denied or not even considered.