Yes, some migrants are gay - but ever more of them, aided by Left-wing lawyers, are faking their sexuality to win the right to stay: PAUL BRACCHI

The corner of Whitechapel High Street, in the bustling heart of London's East End, is where this story of our times begins.Here, sandwiched between Sports Direct and Betfred, is the office of Apanjon. The name, or rather the meaning, will be familiar to the large Bangladeshi population in E1. It is – roughly translated – Bengali for 'one's own people'.For an organisation 'campaigning for equality and justice for the LGBT community' both in Bangladesh, where gay people face criminalisation, and also in Britain, it is particularly apt.The group, whose motto is 'love knows no gender', was established in 2017 and provides welfare services as well as organising regular social and cultural events.Nothing remotely controversial – until this week. The Apanjon website has a 'public gallery' featuring a collage of colourful photos of mainly young men at Christmas parties, monthly gatherings, local restaurants and attending Pride events in matching T-shirts.But behind the seemingly innocent images, a worrying question has now emerged: how many of these men are really gay – and how many just pretended to be gay to get asylum in Britain?Quite possibly, dozens. The Home Office, we learned this week, is reviewing more than 100 potentially fraudulent applications linked to the group from those seeking sanctuary, under the umbrella of the European Convention on Human Rights, from homosexual persecution in their homeland.The revelation followed the arrests of two suspected ringleaders in early morning raids by Immigration Enforcement officers wearing riot helmets and stab vests (with a battering ram at the ready). Apanjon was established in 2017 and provides welfare services as well as organising regular social and cultural events for the Bangladeshi LGBT community The operation at a rundown block in Whitechapel, where two men later emerged in handcuffs from separate flats before being driven away in a 4x4, was reminiscent of the kind of tactics used to apprehend terrorists and organised crime figures.'It was madness,' said a resident describing the moment around 12 officers stormed the graffiti-strewn block on Tuesday.'I heard them shouting, 'Open the door now'. Kids were getting ready to go to school when the raids kicked off.' Few could have guessed their purpose. Asylum claims raising red flags about Apanjon – identified by the Home Office as a 'Bangladeshi LGBT welfare organisation based in Whitechapel' – have been under investigation for several months.'Evidence packages', costing thousands of pounds, it is alleged, included fake documents and letters of support along with staged photographs, many taken at the same gay bars and clubs.The Bangladeshi men often claimed to be gay after initially being refused asylum on political grounds, the Home Office said.This doesn't mean the arrested men – or Apanjon – are guilty of wrongdoing, only that they are the focus of ongoing inquiries.The dramatic scenes in Whitechapel, however, will add weight to the perception that fabricating evidence about sexual orientation to remain in the country is a widespread method.'It's a massive problem,' Ejel Khan, founder of the Muslim LGBT Network, told the Daily Mail. 'A lot of people are doing it.'He has personal experience of those who would seek to enter the country this way. More migrants, often aided by Left-wing lawyers, are faking their sexuality to win the right to stay (file photo)'People have offered me money in the past to give them letters of recommendation, even though they have admitted to me that they weren't gay, so I refused.'I would not entertain them. I help and advocate for asylum seekers who are genuinely gay and fleeing persecution. It's been my life's work. The bogus claimants tarnish the work we do.' Figures show 2,133 asylum seekers claiming to be gay were allowed to stay in Britain in 2023 – the most recent year for which data is available where sexual orientation formed part of the basis for the application – up from 762 in 2022 and 677 in 2021. It's four times the pre-Covid number.Three years ago, Pakistan accounted for the highest number of cases citing sexual orientation (578), followed by Bangladesh (175), where homosexual activity can result in life imprisonment, then Nigeria (103) and India (39).One of the reasons for the spike can be attributed to the backlog of applications which built up during the pandemic.This is certainly not the whole story, however. Surely it cannot be a coincidence that the rise has corresponded with the proliferation of 'Lefty Lawyers' (former home secretary Dame Priti Patel's description) along with a plethora of refugee groups and charities, some of whom are prepared to help migrants game the system, in any number of ways, for political reasons or simply for money.It is a crowded field already occupied by criminal gangs.There is also a more historic and systemic reason.Statistics on sexual orientation were not recorded in a reportable format prior to 2015. By then, the Supreme Court had ended the Home Office's policy of refusing asylum to gay refugees on the grounds they could avoid persecution abroad by pretending to be heterosexual.Explaining the decision, Lord Rodger, one of the judges, said in extraordinary comments: 'Just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.'Theresa May, home secretary at the time, welcomed the ruling and introduced guidance for assessing claims based on sexuality. A group of migrants wade through the water to board an inflatable dinghy before leaving the coast of northern France on September 6 (file photo)The upshot, without going into the legal minutiae, meant a fairer and more humane policy if claimants were telling the truth.But it also offered a process which was easier to circumvent if they weren't.So, depending on your point of view, there are two ways of looking at the Home Office protocols on how caseworkers should consider such asylum claims.It runs to more than 40 pages and the tone is perhaps epitomised by this paragraph: 'The term 'homosexual' may be offensive to some. The term 'gay' is one which is more globally used and recognised as being more neutral as a descriptor. In all instances, caseworkers should establish the terminology preferred by the claimant.'Critics might wonder how any bogus applicants are exposed at all, given what they would describe as the intrinsic political correctness in the guidelines.Yet there have been some glaring examples.Immigration judges, the Home Office said, have previously found claims supported by Apanjon to be 'unreliable, inconsistent and staged, in the case of the photos'. The group was cited in an immigration ruling in August involving a Bangladeshi man who claimed he would be at risk if he was returned home.The claimant, identified only as MHK, said he was a familiar face at the Whitechapel-based group and had a boyfriend – an account backed up by a witness.Explicit photographs were also produced to prove he was gay.But the judge ruled the evidence was 'contrived' and the pictures, in particular, were fake – a decision upheld at appeal, which meant he lost his right to remain in the country. It is not known if this is one of the cases now under scrutiny by the Home Office.There have been other cases with no connection to Apanjon. Last year, Albanian asylum seeker Esmir Demaj suffered a similar fate to 'MHK' after petitioning for the right to stay in Britain because he was a 'gay' man, but failed to reveal he was married to a woman. He was found to have deliberately 'misled' the Home Office. A more egregious culprit was Saheed Azeez, who was granted asylum in 2023 after claiming he might be killed for being gay in his native Nigeria.The same Azeez went on to have three children with three women and run a £220,000 parcel fraud, which later resulted in a jail sentence of more than five years. Not that Apanjon is the only welfare group to make headlines recently. In April, an adviser for Worcester LGBT, a Midlands organisation which describes itself as a support group for gay and lesbian asylum seekers, was secretly filmed promising an undercover BBC reporter that she would help him prepare and memorise a false story for a Home Office interview.'There are a lot of organisations here where there are people like you who are not gay but are applying for the visa,' she told him. 'You are not alone.'She admitted perpetrating the fraud for the past 17 years, which included providing fake photographs, letters claiming sexual relationships and a Worcester LGBT endorsement, all for £2,500.The founder and chairman of the organisation strongly denied any wrongdoing and said there had been a 'misunderstanding'.Nevertheless, the 'adviser' had been 'permanently removed from all association with Worcester LGBT'.Shortly afterwards, the organisation announced it had closed. A message on Worcester LGBT website read: 'We thank all members and supporters for their trust in us over the years... the decision was taken because the harm caused by the BBC's reporting made it impossible for the organisation to continue operating.'There is just one further thing to add about the group.At a Worcester LGBT event more than 150 miles away in Beckton, east London, attended by 175 men, several present told undercover reporters working for the same BBC programme that hardly anyone at the gathering was gay, including one who said: 'Nobody is gay here. Not even 0.01 per cent are gay.'Clearly, there were a lot of 'misunderstandings' before Worcester LGBT shut down.Back in Whitechapel High Street, the Apanjon office remained empty this week following the raids. The group also had a second address located in a private, gated alleyway off the main thoroughfare further along the road, consisting of a first-floor room with just enough space for a table, chairs and two cabinets.The landlord said they 'moved in' on August 28, paid four weeks' rent, but failed to pay him for the following month, between September and October, and had now vanished. When he rang Apanjon, he did not receive a reply.'I never saw anyone from the group,' he said. 'I never saw any clients or any migrants. They still owe me £350. I will legally pursue them for that.'The investigation into Apanjon was welcomed by LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.'Last year, we spoke out after being overwhelmed by a surge in asylum seekers who we believed to be fake,' he said in a statement issued by his charity, the Peter Tatchell Foundation.'Safeguarding the integrity of the asylum system is essential to maintaining public trust and, most importantly, to ensuring that real victims of homophobic persecution are not overlooked or refused a safe haven.'Anyone found guilty over the Apanjon controversy would be removed from the country, the Home Office said.'The fact there is now a spotlight on this is good but this is really only the tip of the iceberg,' said Robert Bates, of the Centre for Migration Control. 'I don't know what the Home Office can do to change the processes to stop this happening. All the anecdotal evidence suggests this is something rampant throughout the asylum system.'Is there anyone, apart from the usual suspects, who believes otherwise?Additional reporting: Isaac Crowson and Mark Branagan