The support of Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma for gay rights in his keynote address at the Commonwealth People’s Forum is a welcome move. Peter Tatchell explains its significance:
“His speech is a tacit rebuke to the more than 40 Commonwealth member states that continue to criminalise homosexuality, with penalties ranging up to life imprisonment. They comprise more than half the countries in the world that treat same-sex relations as a serious criminal offence.
“This is the first time that any Commonwealth Secretary General has ever condemned discrimination and criminalisation on the grounds of sexual identity at the CPF. It is only the second time in history that a Secretary General has criticised homophobic persecution at a Commonwealth event. The first time was at the Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting in Sydney in July, when Mr Sharma stated that ‘vilification and targeting on grounds of sexual orientation is at odds with the fundamental values of the Commonwealth.’
Although I realize that Peter Tatchell has adduced similar arguments, I’m not sure how helpful this gloss on the problem is:
“It’s just a dear little legacy of the British Empire,” Kirby, an openly gay retired High Court judge and Australia’s representative on the 11-member Eminent Persons Group (EPG), said ahead of the meeting. The Chairperson of the group is former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
“It’s a very special British problem.
“And the problem is it makes it very difficult to get messages about HIV out,” he said in comments broadcast on the ABC.
Hat tip: Terry Glavin
