The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in Guyana is being marginalised in the workplace, when accessing healthcare, and in other key sectors and the drive has been intensified to have the Constitution amended to change this.
Dr Christopher Carrico, an independent researcher, who compiled a report, ‘Collateral Damage: The Social Impact of Laws Affecting LGBT Persons in Guyana’ said: “I realised this is a very serious matter… People are frightened to go to the police and report crimes committed against them because they are afraid they also will be charged with crimes. I realised it’s much bigger than people being fined for cross-dressing or the existence of these laws that are not enforced. The way these laws are, they create a permanent class of criminal.”
The report was launched yesterday at the CIDA Programme Support Unit.
The study examines the laws that criminalise the LGBT community and its effects on an entire population.
It is designed to evaluate the threat of enforcement of laws against sodomy, same sex sexual activity, cross-dressing, loitering and vagrancy.
Carrico noted that in most parts of the world, there has been movement towards the decriminalisation of homosexual acts.
However, in 11 Caribbean territories, including Guyana, sodomy and same sex sexual activity remain illegal.
During his research, Carrico said, it was discovered that persons found guilty of sodomy in Guyana can be given a life sentence imprisonment, while laws against ‘gross indecency’ between males and cross-dressing can carry punishments up to two years imprisonment and fines of not less than $7,000.
“While the laws against sodomy and same sex sexual activity are largely unenforced, research in other national contexts has shown that even unenforced laws can have pervasive effects in the society,” he said.
Guyana’s cross-dressing laws, he pointed out, are periodically enforced with reference made to a 2009 case where seven males were arrested and charged with dressing in women’s clothing. These persons were fined after pleading guilty to the charge.
After interviews conducted with 11 males who identified as homosexual or bisexual, five females who identified as lesbian or bisexual and five biological males who cross-dress as women, it was concluded that LGBT Guyanese are injured by laws that criminalise their gender identities or sexual orientations.
Harassment and abuse by the police were reported by almost everyone who was interviewed in Carrico’s study, many of whom were arrested, threatened with arrest, charged with crimes, prosecuted and punished by the courts.
While in the hands of the police, it was reported that they were demanded to oblige with bribes, extortion and demands of sexual favours. In some cases, complaints of sexual abuse by other prison inmates were ignored.
It was also found that most interviewees were fearful of reporting crimes committed against themselves as they anticipated charges laid against them by police as a result of their sexual orientation.
It was also reported that many of them were harassed by persons who felt they were personally enforcing the law.
The research also found that members of the LGBT community carefully selected where they lived and vacationed, while the laws criminalising their sexual activities more severely affecting their livelihood.
“Nearly everybody we spoke to faces some problems in their places of work. People believed that they were not hired because they were homosexual, people believe that they were not promoted because they were homosexual, most people tried really hard to closet their identity at work… one implication of this is that the widespread stigma and description is actually a threat to people’s ability to make a living and be successful,” Carrico posited.
Ulele Burnham, Barrister, Doughty Chambers, London, in her address, said that the devastating effects of the anti-sodomy laws should not be underestimated.
“Those to whom they are directed are told with brutal clarity and force that they are neither of nor from the Caribbean… that they must conform to imagine an unduly constricting notion of what it means to be Caribbean citizen, a subject, a man or a woman. That they must conform to that or be damned and be depersonalized,” she said.
Burnham opined that if positions within the Guyana constitution were tested, they would be breached by the mere existence of these laws.
“A respect for equality and diversity and dignity, etc is not to be seen as another form of imperialism. In fact, many of these laws are vestiges of colonialism, they were intended to subjugate and manage black bodies and colonial persons… these laws are repugnant precisely because they are an alien legacy. They are apart of the system which I describe as moral regulation of the population,” she said in brief remarks.
Meanwhile, Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland, Director of Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP), noted that governments have been very slow in addressing the issue of buggery laws which involve the social norms that exist in a lot of regional communities.
“The English speaking Caribbean has been very slow to respond… So we know that our epidemic is fuelled by the environment in which persons operate, the fear, the stigma, the shame and the poor approaches to treatment and access yet we have been very slow to mount the kind of response. We are slow because we have used the legislative environment, in my view, as an excuse not to make the kinds of interventions we can make,” she stated.
At Caricom, Bynoe-Sutherland said, they have been making slow but steady progress, building on the work that CIDA funded in 2003-2006.
“We have been looking at the legislations in other countries and… we have received funding in 2009-2010 from the World Bank to develop model legislation around anti-discrimination,” she noted, pointing out that this will be used to encourage government to take a legislative step on the grounds of discrimination that they have ambiguously stated in that law which does include sexual orientation.
