End this discrimination

Amid reports that members of this community are being targeted by criminal elements, a special report in yesterday’s edition disclosed even more worrisome causes for concern.

There has long been suspicion that homophobic attitudes have hindered the arms of justice in cases involving LGBTQI persons.

But the account of one police officer, quoted in the report, is alarming confirmation that this is a substantial matter yet to be arrested.

The officer said a homophobic attitude has been alive and well for decades throughout the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.

He said officers, especially male officers, do not want gay people around them and further reported several instances in which gay men were told to leave police stations even before they could make a report, possibly sending them to their deaths.

Even if a report is taken, the officer said, it would be accompanied by victim blaming or shaming so that the victim was made doubly reluctant to take action when falling prey to criminals.

Other times, he said, police simply ignore cases, refusing to investigate them because an LGBTQI person is involved.

But this scandalous problem does not appear to reside only within the Police Service.

Even when matters are brought to court, bizarre legal provisions allow persons who have committed hate crimes to cite the victim’s sexuality as a defence.

In a reference to the so-called provocation defence, the officer reported that magistrates or judges easily accept the “gay panic” defence. “The defence is always the same,” he said.

Said the officer: “They come around me with that macomere thing and I trip. You pick up a man, he buying drinks and food for you whole night, and two o’clock in the night he says, ‘Hey, leh we go home by me.’ You gone home by the man and then you get gay panic in the man room? And the court accepts it very easily and the prosecution doesn’t force it.” Thus the issue of LGBTQI equality is not merely one of reforming existing homophobic statutes (there are many, ranging from the Equal Opportunity Act, the Immigration Act, and various sections of the statutes relating to sexual offences) but also the need to devise more robust policies resulting in greater levels of training and sensitization as well as modification of common-law defences.

But for now we salute the actions of NGO groups such as Womantra, Friends for Life, the Silver Lining Foundation, I Am One, the Women’s Caucus of TT, and CAISO (Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation), as well as individual activists such as Jason Jones for taking steps to raise the profile of these issues.

A grouping of these organizations has also decided to help members of the LGBTQI community arm themselves with strategies needed to cater for the increased levels of risk they may face.

Colin Robinson, president of CAISO, notes, “The police and society are not friendly to us, so the kind of support that other people might have, we don’t have. There is a cost for us even to report a crime. Sometimes when we do, we lose because we lose the support of family when we are outed.” There must be greater sensitization.

But also, the State has a moral duty to punish severely those who target any section of society. It cannot hide behind the discriminatory biases of constituents when it comes to protecting the human right to life