T&T activists say of Guyana crossdressing lawsuit: Just first step to bring changes

Trinidad Express

The motion was filed February 19, with the support of Guyana NGO Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination and lawyers in Guyana, St Lucia and at the University of the West Indies Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) on the Cave Hill, Barbados campus.

The litigants were four MtF transgender Guyanese who were rounded up in a crackdown, stripped, denied medical attention, detained over a weekend, and fined US$7,500 under chapter 153(1)(xlvii) of the Summary Jurisdiction (Offences) Act, Chapter 8.02.

Appearing unrepresented before Guyanese Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson in February 2009, they were ridiculed by her from the bench, lectured that they were men, not women, admonished that they were confused, and instructed to go to church and give their lives to Jesus Christ.

The 2009 cases generated considerable publicity, and there were many domestic and international appeals to the Guyanese Government to remove the law. After these went unheeded, the constitutional motion was filed. In addition to raising due process issues, the complaint says the law is irrational, discriminatory, undemocratic, contrary to the rule of law and infringes the constitutional rights to freedom of expression, equality before the law and protection from discrimination.

Organisers at CAISO (Trinidad and Tobago’s Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation), who since their founding seven months ago, have collaborated closely with other gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) advocates across the region, applauded the Guyanese move. ’The way I dress is a fundamental part of who I am, my way of life,’ said Beverly Alvarez, who participated along with one of the Guyanese litigants in the first Caribbean regional transgender human rights and health conference in September of last year.

’This case that Peaches and others in Guyana have filed goes to the heart of freedom of expression, our freedom to express our gender identity.’

Ashily Dior, another transgender activist with the group added, ’It’s a well recognised medical fact that, for transpeople like me, who I am just doesn’t fit with the sex of the body I was born into. This is not a vice. Some of us are lucky to afford hormones and surgery; but many of us just can’t.’

Dior recently represented Trinidad and Tobago at a regional meeting of the International Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Association, where she was elected an alternate delegate for the Caribbean; and she is hoping to find work educating the public about gender identity issues.

Trinidad and Tobago transpeople have been on the map internationally since 1998. In a landmark case that year, after police officer Eric George arrested and attempted to strip search a 27-year-old transgender woman in San Fernando when she shoved a photographer harassing her, Lynette Maharaj, wife of the then Attorney-General, both clients of her business, represented her in a successful lawsuit.

’Trinidad and Tobago may not be next in line for GLBT law reform, but we’re definitely in the queue,’ said University of the West Indies (UWI) law graduate Kareem Griffith, another member of CAISO, reflecting on the case. Griffith played a key role in an international meeting held during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last year where representatives of 12 countries planned strategy for sexual orientation and gender identity legal reform efforts.