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."
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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.