When Uganda passed a new anti-LGBTQI+ law in March, Vinka’s stomach dropped. ‘The attitude of the people around me changed, and my home was no longer safe,’ she explains. As a transgender woman, Vinka was forced to flee her country for neighbouring Zambia.
But there she ran into more danger. ‘They say you get “asylum”, but it is not safe here either,’ says Vinka, who was hospitalized after being stripped and beaten during her first days in a Zambian refugee camp. While in hospital, she discovered she was HIV positive. ‘I cried, I felt like I wanted to kill myself, and had no-one there to comfort me.’
