Canada denies gay man's claim as refugee

Joaquin Ramirez is afraid to be sent home to his native El Salvador and face the three police officers that he claims raped him in a sugarcane field two years ago.

The 39-year-old HIV-positive man said the accused perpetrators have visited his family and threatened to kill him because he infected them with the virus that causes AIDS.

But the story of Ramirez, a closeted gay man, hasn't impressed Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board or a border service removal officer, who asked why he didn't ask authorities back home for protection.

"I didn't tell anyone that I was raped because I was too ashamed of myself. I didn't tell the police. I didn't tell the people in the hospital. I didn't tell my own family," explained the soft-spoken man, who took advantage of the 2006 HIV/AIDS conference in Toronto as a way out.

"How could I go to the same people and ask them to protect me when it's the same people who did this to me?" asked Ramirez, before he started crying and had to stop the interview.

Unlike most of the estimated 160 AIDS conference delegates who successfully sought asylum in Canada in 2006, Ramirez is believed to be among a minority turned down, said Francisco Rico-Martinez, executive director of Toronto's FCJ Refugee Centre.

"What we found shocking in Joaquin's case is that the risk of being a gay person in El Salvador was not properly assessed in these decisions," Rico-Martinez said.

 See Gay man denied claim as refugee
Toronto Star,  Canada