KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als with booked trips to the Unit­ed King­dom but no Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) re­main frus­trat­ed as to their next move, and the trav­el plans for oth­ers are now in lim­bo over a new visa pol­i­cy and fees.

How­ev­er, one ac­tivist be­lieves the UK’s de­ci­sion to im­pose visas on T&T cit­i­zens will grave­ly af­fect those seek­ing refuge from per­se­cu­tion.

LGBTQI+ ac­tivist Ja­son Jones—whose law­suit chal­leng­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bug­gery laws caused changes to the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act—said yes­ter­day that hun­dreds of lo­cal queer peo­ple ap­ply for asy­lum in the UK every year be­cause their lives are in dan­ger, not be­cause they want to mis­use the sys­tem.

“Now we’re be­ing scape­goat­ed for this visa re­quire­ment. They’re say­ing oh well the gays were run­ning up there to claim asy­lum which is ab­solute rub­bish. The asy­lum cas­es that are com­ing to Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca are peo­ple who are in dan­ger. The vast ma­jor­i­ty of them have been made home­less by their fam­i­lies, have lost jobs.

“Let’s face facts, we in Trinidad and To­ba­go hate gay peo­ple and what we need to do and what the British gov­ern­ment needs to do is fight that en­dem­ic ho­mo­pho­bia,” Jones said.

At­tor­ney Criston Williams agreed. He said the new visa re­quire­ment could force more peo­ple to use il­le­gal means to leave T&T.

Williams said he be­lieves the ma­jor­i­ty of lo­cal asy­lum seek­ers are peo­ple who feel their lives are threat­ened by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

He said oth­ers are con­vinced the TTPS can­not pro­tect them from gang vi­o­lence. He said these peo­ple are of­ten la­belled as com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and gang lead­ers.

“Per­son­al­ly, I do not like it. I am very up­set by it, but it may be a rea­son­able po­si­tion to adapt when Eng­land needs to pro­tect their se­cu­ri­ty is­sues... I would say that 95 per cent of the peo­ple seek­ing asy­lum have claimed it is be­cause they want to en­sure their right to life. From the cas­es that we have and have knowl­edge of, it is not be­cause they can’t get jobs or any­thing like that. It is be­cause they are say­ing they’re be­ing per­se­cut­ed in their own coun­try and who is do­ing the per­se­cu­tion?

“In some in­stances, I am aware that per­sons have said the TTPS is al­ways threat­en­ing them, so they want to en­sure they don’t get killed by the TTPS. In the sec­ond in­stance al­so, they may be per­sons who fear gang vi­o­lence and the in­abil­i­ty of the State to pro­tect their life in Trinidad and To­ba­go. There are one or two in­stances where I know it’s be­cause of sex­u­al pref­er­ence but 90 to 95 per cent of the cas­es are sim­ply be­cause they wish to pro­tect their right to live and not be killed and there isn’t any safe­ty mech­a­nism in Trinidad and To­ba­go that can pro­tect their life.”