BBC 5 Live presenter: ‘Gay is the new defence for Jamaicans who want to stay in Britain’
BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Dotun Adebayo has suggested that Jamaicans who face deportation should claim to be gay in order to remain in Britain.
The broadcaster, who also presents on BBC London 94.9, made the comments in his column for The Voice, Britain’s largest black newspaper.
He wrote: “One in 10 Jamaicans are gay. I know some of you ‘yardies’ may not like to hear this, but it’s true. If 10 of you stand up in a dance, one of you is a homosexual.
“It’s no biggie, so please don’t come across as all ignorant and extra about it. Because even if the numbers were less or higher, it ain’t worth beating yourself up over it – or anyone else for that matter.”
Adebayo then refereed to last month’s decision by the Court of Appeal to block the deportation of a Jamaican killer on the basis of his sexual orientation.
The Home Office has questioned whether the man, referred to only as JR, is actually gay.
JR was “party to murder” at the age of 16 when he and another schoolboy knifed Abdul Maye, 15, to death over a £10 debt outside Little Ilford Comprehensive School in Manor Park, Newham, east London, in 2001.
He was sentenced to detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure in September 2002, and was freed from prison in June 2012.
Adebayo wrote: “The recent ruling by a High Court judge here in Britain, might be something that some Jamaicans who want to ‘try a ting ah foreign’ but can’t get a visa to stay, might want to consider.
“Because in the case of a Jamaican man who has just served a sentence for murder in a UK jail, a miscreant who the Home Secretary is desperate to deport to Kingston, a judge has ruled that sending him back home would be against his human rights because he has just come out of the closet and declared himself gay.
“And everyone knows that to send an openly gay man to Jamaica is like Welcome to Hellrock.
“‘Gay’ is the new defence for Jamaicans who want to stay in Britain.
“In fact, there are so many ‘gay’ Jamaicans in prisons in this country – both men and women – that it begs the question whether the number of gays in Jamaica isn’t really higher than previously thought.
“So all you ‘yardies’ who want to get your permanent residency, you know what you have to do…!”
