The NGO Aids-Free World says T&T?and Be­lize are the on­ly two coun­tries in the west­ern hemi­sphere that "ar­bi­trar­i­ly ban the en­try of ho­mo­sex­u­als as a pro­hib­it­ed class." The group is work­ing to change that. Aids-Free World's le­gal ad­vis­er for mar­gin­alised groups, Mau­rice Tom­lin­son, is a Ja­maican LGBT and HIV ac­tivist. Tom­lin­son is gay and is there­fore legal­ly barred from en­ter­ing Be­lize and T&T.

Ear­li­er this month, he was in­vit­ed to make a pre­sen­ta­tion at a UN meet­ing in T&T but said he felt oblig­ed to turn down the in­vi­ta­tion and has since ini­ti­at­ed a chal­lenge to T&T's Im­mi­gra­tion Act be­fore the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

In a re­lease, Aids-Free World said Tom­lin­son trav­els all over the Caribbean and has made pre­sen­ta­tions about the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of ho­mo­pho­bia on the HIV re­sponse be­fore UN con­fer­ences, gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, se­nior ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and na­tion­al Aids coun­cils across the re­gion.

He has al­so led hu­man-rights doc­u­men­ta­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy train­ing in the Caribbean HIV and Aids re­sponse. The Unit­ed Be­lize Ad­vo­ca­cy Move­ment, which the re­lease said was "Be­lize's on­ly civ­il-so­ci­ety group work­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to pro­mote the health and hu­man rights of LGBT/MSM cit­i­zens," has in­vit­ed Tom­lin­son to lead train­ing and sen­si­ti­sa­tion ses­sions in Be­lize City next month.

How­ev­er, Tom­lin­son has said as an at­tor­ney he was un­will­ing to break the law to con­duct these ses­sions. He al­so con­sid­ers the ban on his en­try in­to Be­lize a vi­o­la­tion of his right to free­dom of move­ment with­in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty. He has there­fore re­fused the in­vi­ta­tion and with the sup­port of Aids-Free World is al­so chal­leng­ing Be­lize's Im­mi­gra­tion Act be­fore the CCJ.

In ac­cor­dance with the rules of the CCJ, Tom­lin­son has writ­ten to the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment, ask­ing it to in­sist that the gov­ern­ment of Be­lize re­move this trav­el re­stric­tion, which he de­scribes as un­rea­son­able. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, he wants the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment to bring the mat­ter be­fore the CCJ on the grounds that Be­lize's im­mi­gra­tion act breach­es the pro­vi­sions for free move­ment un­der the Caribbean Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.

If the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica fails or re­fus­es to bring the mat­ter be­fore the CCJ, Tom­lin­son will try to do so him­self.

Aids-Free World said in its re­lease that re­peal­ing Sec­tion 5 of the Be­lize Im­mi­gra­tion Act would al­so "lib­er­ate oth­er mar­gin­alised groups," since oth­er class­es of peo­ple pro­hib­it­ed from en­ter­ing Be­lize in­clud­ed the men­tal­ly chal­lenged (de­scribed as "any id­iot or any per­son who is in­sane or men­tal­ly de­fi­cient" and the phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled (de­scribed as "deaf and dumb or deaf and blind, or dumb and blind)."

In 2011, the group said, Be­lize signed and rat­i­fied the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties. There are com­pa­ra­ble re­stric­tions in T&T's Im­mi­gra­tion Act. In prac­tice, T&T's Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion has said this sec­tion of the law is not en­forced.

Aids-Free World com­ment­ed: "The of­fen­sive and over­broad pro­hi­bi­tions in Sec­tion 5 of the Be­lize Im­mi­gra­tion Act must be re­pealed in or­der to com­bat the crush­ing stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion against vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions that still per­vades most of the Caribbean, re­stricts the fight against HIV and con­tributes to the fact that the re­gion has the sec­ond high­est HIV preva­lence rate in the world af­ter sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa."

More in­fo

Mau­rice Tom­lin­son has ques­tioned the tim­ing of the re­lease of a let­ter from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in which she crit­i­cised the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty. On Tues­day the T&T Guardian re­port­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter had writ­ten to a British LGBT?ac­tivist in Au­gust, telling him she did not sup­port dis­crim­i­na­tion on the ba­sis of gen­der iden­ti­ty or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

The PM said: "I share your view that the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty in T&T is a mat­ter which must be ad­dressed on the grounds of hu­man rights and dig­ni­ty to which every in­di­vid­ual is en­ti­tled un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law. " In a let­ter sent to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Tom­lin­son com­ment­ed that as a claimant in the ac­tion against the "ho­mo­pho­bic" im­mi­gra­tion law of T&T, he ap­plaud­ed what he called a po­ten­tial hu­man rights ad­vance by the Gov­ern­ment that would af­fect a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of both T&T?and Cari­com cit­i­zens.

How­ev­er, he added, he found it "be­wil­der­ing that such a sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic pol­i­cy change...is com­mu­ni­cat­ed to a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual in the UK months be­fore our re­gion gets to hear about it."

Say­ing this was not nor­mal pro­ce­dure in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, he added: "The tim­ing of the 'leak' is en­tire­ly sus­pect: I launched my chal­lenge against the T&T im­mi­gra­tion law just a cou­ple of weeks ago. The re­lease of the let­ter at this mo­ment smacks of dam­age con­trol."

He said he hoped the PM's state­ment would not be "an­oth­er emp­ty po­lit­i­cal promise sim­i­lar to the one made by Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter, Por­tia Simp­son-Miller...near­ly a year ago she promised to call for a par­lia­men­tary con­science vote to re­view the coun­try's 1864 an­ti-bug­gery law. Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of In­for­ma­tion re­cent­ly an­nounced that "this vote had been placed at the 'bot­tom of the (leg­isla­tive) pile."

Tom­lin­son won­dered whether T&T's PM?had a time­line in mind. "Af­ter all," he not­ed, "four months have al­ready elapsed since her promise of a new pol­i­cy." Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have not replied to T&T?Guardian re­quests for in­for­ma­tion on the con­tents or sta­tus of T&T's draft gen­der pol­i­cy or the process of adopt­ing it.