She did so a safe distance from her homeland, where LGBTIQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transsexual, Intersex and Queer/Questioning) people regularly face persecution that is actively encouraged by political and religious leaders.

Just last month, a gender nonconforming LGBTIQ+ activist was brutally murdered in his own home. Hacked in the head with a gardening tool, according to Sexual Minorities Uganda.

Negesa is not exaggerating when she says: I cant go back home. I may lose my life.

So, the 27-year-old has become an asylum seeker, applying for indefinite leave to remain in Germany. She has been housed in a LGBTIQ+-friendly shelter while her case is considered. A decision is expected on Friday.

It has been several weeks since she said goodbye to her family and headed to Berlin. If her application is granted, there is no telling when she will see them again. They are missing me a lot, she says of those for whom her athletics career had been a route out of poverty. When they call me, they are asking when Im coming back.

But Negesa is defiant about her decision to end seven years of silence about how she was told just weeks before the London Olympics that she produced too much testosterone to compete fairly as a woman, how she found herself with one option for reducing it, how what she thought would be a simple procedure resulted in her internal testes being cut out, and how she felt so unwell afterwards that she feared she would die.

Read more:
Exclusive interview: DSD athlete Annet Negesa - 'My family miss me, but if I go back to Uganda I may lose my life' - The Telegraph

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