Wes­ley Gib­bings

At least one T&T na­tion­al was grant­ed asy­lum in the Unit­ed States last year, based on the claim that he faced con­tin­ued per­se­cu­tion in this coun­try as a re­sult of his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. Im­mi­gra­tion Equal­i­ty (IE), a US-based hu­man rights NGO, han­dled 37 asy­lum claims from T&T in 2010. There were 38 suc­cess­ful ac­tions by Ja­maican na­tion­als and four from Grena­da. The names of ap­pli­cants are not usu­al­ly dis­closed and not all claims are han­dled by the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Leg­isla­tive short­com­ings that do not ad­dress dis­crim­i­na­tion on the grounds of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion were cit­ed in most in­stances.

"In many cas­es, the clients who turn to Im­mi­gra­tion Equal­i­ty for help are lit­er­al­ly run­ning for their lives," IE ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Rachel B Tiv­en said in a press re­lease. This, US-based Puer­to Ri­can im­mi­gra­tion at­tor­ney Sheila Velez said, fre­quent­ly oc­curs be­cause there was a lack of ac­cess to ad­e­quate an­ti-dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion in the Caribbean and the re­sult can of­ten be acts of vi­o­lence in­clud­ing tor­ture and out­right job and oth­er dis­crim­i­na­tion. Lo­cal ac­tivists do not be­lieve such claims were ex­ag­ger­at­ed.

Gay, les­bian, bi­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der (GLBT) spokesman, Cyrus Sylvester, told the Guardian: "While some may be of the opin­ion that this claim is over­stat­ed, for many mem­bers of the GLBT com­mu­ni­ty here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, per­se­cu­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is a fright­en­ing re­al­i­ty. "While all claims for asy­lum will not be of the same mer­it, I strong­ly be­lieve that some of these cas­es can amount to le­git­i­mate claims for asy­lum in oth­er, more tol­er­ant so­ci­eties," he said, adding he was aware of oth­er suc­cess­ful ap­pli­ca­tions in Cana­da and Eu­rope.

"It (per­se­cu­tion) hap­pens and some per­sons are so trau­ma­tised by these at­tacks that they some­times con­tem­plate or even com­mit sui­cide, some be­come with­drawn from (GLBT) so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties and con­tin­ue a life in seclu­sion, some be­come in­tro­vert­ed and some even at­tempt des­per­ate­ly to flee from these shores vow­ing nev­er to re­turn," Sylvester said. Velez, who has spo­ken ex­ten­sive­ly on Caribbean hu­man rights is­sues, sug­gest­ed in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian that "the stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion against all ho­mo­sex­u­al acts, gays, les­bians, trans­gen­ders and 'all sex­u­als' in Caribbean so­ci­eties is large­ly due to a long­stand­ing het­ero­nor­ma­tive cul­ture.

"How­ev­er, the fact that it is a long- stand­ing part of our cul­ture does not mean we should not do away with it," she said. The im­mi­gra­tion at­tor­ney cit­ed as one ex­am­ple, moves to ad­dress is­sues such as do­mes­tic vi­o­lence-some­thing she said that was "for many years sanc­tioned as part of the jus­ti­fied ex­er­cise of au­thor­i­ty and con­trol of a hus­band over his wife. "By now, most Caribbean states have adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion pro­tect­ing women from do­mes­tic vi­o­lence," Velez said. Col­in Robin­son, who serves on the steer­ing com­mit­tee of the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (Caiso), ex­pressed some dis­com­fort with me­dia at­ten­tion on the is­sue. "Ir­re­spon­si­ble me­dia scruti­ny on a mech­a­nism that can be a mat­ter of life and death can trig­ger po­lit­i­cal con­ser­vatism and re­spons­es that can be quite harm­ful," he said.

Caiso has re­buffed a pro­pos­al by Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mary King to have a na­tion­al de­bate and ref­er­en­dum on same-sex mar­riages, say­ing it would make the coun­try a "laugh­ing stock" in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. When the sug­ges­tion arose in the Sen­ate, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day cit­ed a "chap­ter" in the bib­li­cal book of Leviti­cus in an ap­par­ent at­tempt to in­voke re­li­gious op­po­si­tion to the prac­tice of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty. This in­ci­dent, Caiso said in one blog, was ev­i­dence of the "cir­cus" the na­tion­al de­bate was like­ly to be­come.