USA Africa Dialogue Series - Gay Jamaicans launch legal action over island's homophobic laws

Gay Jamaicans launch legal action over island's homophobic laws

Landmark case seeks to abolish colonial-era 'buggery' laws and stop
murders and violent attacks on Caribbean homosexuals
Owen Bowcott and Maya Wolfe-Robinson
The Guardian, Friday 26 October 2012 17.21 BST


Two gay Jamaicans have launched a legal challenge to colonial-era
laws, which in effect criminalise homosexuality, on the grounds that
they are unconstitutional and promote homophobia throughout the
Caribbean.

The landmark action, supported by the UK-based Human Dignity Trust, is
aimed at removing three clauses of the island's Offences Against
Persons Act of 1864, commonly known as the "buggery" laws.

The battle over the legislation – blamed by critics for perpetuating a
popular culture of hatred for "batty boys", as gay men are derided in
some dancehall music – has also drawn a British lawyer into the
debate, who said that Jamaica should not follow the legislative
example of the UK.

The legal challenge is being taken to the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, which is modelled on the European Court of Human Rights.
Jamaica is not a full member and any ruling would only be advisory and
not binding; it would, nonetheless, send out a strong signal of
international disapproval.

When the Jamaican prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller, was elected
last December, she said she would hire a gay person to serve in her
cabinet and condemned discrimination. Despite early sympathetic
signals, her government has not attempted to repeal the laws.

The Offences Against Persons Act does not formally ban homosexuality
but clause 76 provides for up to 10 years' imprisonment, with or
without hard labour, for anyone convicted of the "abominable crime of
buggery committed either with mankind or any animal". Two further
clauses outlaw attempted buggery and gross indecency between two men.

Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Murders of
gay men are increasing, according to Dane Lewis, executive director of
the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-Flag), who is
one of those petitioning the commission.

"This year alone there have been nine [murders]," he said. "The
violence in Jamaica is having a spillover effect on other parts of the
Caribbean: St Lucia now has a murder or so every year."

One prominent victim was John Terry, the British honorary consul in
Montego Bay, who was found dead in 2009 having been beaten and
strangled. A note left on his body read: "This is what will happen to
all gays."

Many gay Jamaicans have fled abroad, some to the UK. In 2002, two gay
Jamaican men were granted asylum in the UK because their lives were in
danger from "severe homophobia" in the Caribbean.

Senior Jamaican police officers have in the past dismissed killings as
the result of gay-on-gay "crimes of passion" – an interpretation
disputed by civil rights groups.

In a House of Lords debate this week on the treatment of homosexual
men and women in the developing world, the Conservative Lord Lexden
said a "wave of persecution and violence has been suffered by gay
people connected with [J-Flag]". Intolerance of homosexuality, he
noted, was a legacy of the British empire: "Today, 42 of the 54
nations of the Commonwealth criminalise same-sex relations."

Jonathan Cooper, a London barrister who is the chief executive of the
Human Dignity Trust, said: "We want to ensure that Jamaica satisfies
its international human rights treaty obligations. We are supporting J-
Flag in this case.

"These, and two accompanying cases supported by Aids-Free World, are
the first cases before the Inter-American Commission but the issue is
clear in international human rights law."

The UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to
which Jamaica is a signatory, protects private adult, consensual
sexual activity.

J-Flag has also received free pro-bono advice from the UK City law
firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in drawing up their legal
challenge.

One of the main bodies arguing to preserve the Offences Against Person
Act is the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship in Jamaica (which has no
connection to the UK Lawyers' Christian Fellowship).

Paul Diamond, a British barrister and Evangelical Christian who
specialises in religious discrimination cases, took part in a debate
on Jamaica's laws at the University of the West Indies last December.

"[Jamaicans] feel they are being pressurised by the UK and US
governments in terms of visas and aid grants to modify their position
[on homosexuality], which they say is morally based," Diamond told the
Guardian. "I told them that England has totally failed in finding any
balance between religious [and civil] freedoms."

The prime minister's office in Jamaica did not respond to enquiries.

Anti-gay laws in the Caribbean

While Jamaica holds the crown for being the worst place in the
Americas to be gay, the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean has a
long history of homophobia. The British colonial administration
entrenched "buggery laws" in its colonies, many of which remain in
some form.

The Bahamas criminalises same-sex activity between adults in public,
although not in private. Jamaican, Guyanese and Grenadian laws do not
mention lesbianism, but Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Antigua and St
Lucia prohibit all acts of homosexuality.

Trinidad and Tobago's state-sponsored homophobia extends further
through immigration laws prohibiting "prostitutes, homosexuals or
persons living on the earnings of prostitutes or homosexuals, or
persons reasonably suspected as coming to Trinidad and Tobago for
these or any other immoral purposes" from entering the country.

Although the law is not enforced, there were attempts from Christian
groups to prevent Elton John headlining the Tobago Jazz Festival in
2007. Church leaders were worried about the singer's potential
influence on the "impressionable minds" of the island's young people.

Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat,
and the Turks and Caicos islands were forced to repeal their sodomy
laws in 2000, when Britain issued an order to its overseas
territories, which it had to do to meet international treaty
obligations.



© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved.

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