Press
“'I know what it means to be gay back home,' Adebayo Katiiti said. 'Pulling out your hair, beating you up, treating you like a non-citizen in your own country'.
”Katiiti acknowledged there are challenges that come with being a refugee — he has faced instances of racial discrimination, like being shouted at while waiting for a train.
“A lot of things I can handle,” he said. “I can’t compare those things to what I’ve been through.”
– Transgender Ugandan swimmer, once arrested and persecuted at home, attains refugee status in Canada
“Just a few days before the group left to fly to Edmonton, two of the swimmers had been sitting in a jail cell in Uganda after being arrested at a Pride event. Adebayo Katiiti was one of those swimmers and after he arrived in Edmonton, the threatening messages from family members began to arrive from home.
Katiiti, who is a trans man, was told that if he returned to Uganda, he would be killed. It wasn’t until the morning of his flight that he decided to stay in Canada and request asylum..”
“I had never seen snow before and there is so much of it here,” Katiiti says, laughing. “At 22 years old, I have made my first snowman and it won’t be my last.”
– Ugandan athlete receives refugee status in Canada
“The display celebrates the contributions of Black LGBTQ2S+ individuals to the fields of activism, film, music, science fiction and more.”
Chirs Adebayo Katiiti, a black transgender man and local Edmonton activist, was also featured for his work founding RaricaNow, a non-profit organization advocating for the human rights of LGBTQ2S+ refugees. Adebayo Katiiti also led last year’s Stonewall Rally which recognized not only Stonewall, but also black figures that have been left-behind in movements.
“Queer, transgender, and Indigenous, black folks that have not been recognized, he’s done so much of the work in Edmonton in making sure that they have been given the spotlight and recognition they deserved,” Zewde said. “He’s definitely someone I wanted to make sure was on the wall.”
– The Landing celebrates Black LGBTQ2S+ individuals for Black History Month
“…I lost a lot of friends too, but those were not my friends. If you’re my friend, you’re going to be there for me. You’re going to accept me the way I am.”
ADEBAYO KATIITI
“I learned swimming when I was 20, after one year at the university, because I did a course unit on swimming and I fell in love with it,” he says.“I kept swimming and made it to the university team and then made it to the national team. Then we had this competition coming up, the IGLA swimming competition.”
