Transgender teen Zoella Zayce fled Brunei last year, which introduced the death penalty this month for homosexuality. Read more of her story:
VANCOUVER - Zoella Zayce displays no photos of her family in her basement apartment in Vancouver, thousands of miles from where she left them in Brunei. The 19-year-old refugee claimant is a transgender woman, something she never told the family she describes as conservative.
“I just didn’t feel safe with my family,” said Zayce, who knew from childhood that she was transgender. At 11 or 12, she remembers being forced to visit a cleric who performed a ritual she described as an exorcism or cleansing. “I was traumatized.” She chose Canada because it was far from Brunei. She thought it would be too expensive for her family or the authorities to come after her. Canada also had the reputation as an open society with strong protections for human rights.
Brunei has defended its right to implement the laws. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, 72, who has ruled the oil-rich country for 51 years, is one the wealthiest people in the world.Transgender woman Zoella Zayce, who fled Brunei in anticipation of escalation of sharia law, is pictured at her home in Vancouver, B.C., Canada April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Mark Goodnow
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