PORT OF SPAIN--According to the Associated Press (AP), a St. Maarten government official joined a chorus of gay rights activists in “blasting” the United Nations on Tuesday for organising a book launch in Trinidad to talk about HIV and human rights in the Caribbean, noting the island bars entry to homosexuals.

 

Margje Troost, acting director of the HIV/AIDS project at the St. Maarten Ministry of Public Health, was quoted by the AP as asking: “Why is the UN not urging the Caribbean countries more strongly to ban these clearly outdated laws and regulations which are indisputably violating the human rights of so many?” She went on to note that she was not speaking on behalf of her government.

 

The book launch is being sponsored in part by the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS, and numerous activists were invited to attend. Among them was Maurice Tomlinson, a legal adviser with New York-based AIDS-Free World, who filed a lawsuit against Trinidad’s government seeking to strike down the law.

 

Trinidad is the only Caribbean island with such a law, and Tomlinson questioned why UN officials had not chosen another venue to talk about the book, Legal and Policy Perspectives on HIV and Human Rights in the Caribbean. Caribbean officials involved in HIV/AIDS programmes called on the United Nations to help reject such laws.

 

According to the AP article, in December 2012, Trinidad Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar ordered government officials to prepare a national gender policy to help end discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation, but it is unclear if that policy has been created. The office of Gender, Youth and Child Development did not return messages for comment, the press agency reported.

 

Several Caribbean nations ban sex between men. The penalty in most islands, including Grenada, is up to 10 years in prison, although Barbados and Guyana allow life imprisonment, according to a 2010 United Nations report.

 

In a related statement this week, though focused on same-sex unions, St. Maarten’s Prime Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams said, “It’s not for me to judge those choices and as a government official it does not give me the right either. However, I also believe in the democratic fundamentals and that is … to have decisions and choices made on the basis of the majority [but – Ed.] respecting the opinion of the minority.

 

“I don’t believe that a minority should force us to change our laws because I believe in the democratic principles, because after all is said and done what does the majority think? But you need to respect the fact that you have people who think differently.”

 

(The Daily Herald)