PM moves on discrimination

The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad-Bisessar, has said she wants to “put an end to all discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation”.

In a letter to the UK’s Kaleidoscope Trust executive director, she said that her government’s gender policy, currently under discussion in cabinet, was expected to uphold the rights of all citizens.

Persad Bisessar said she agreed that stigmatisation of homosexuality in Trinidad and Tobago is a matter which must be addressed on the grounds of human rights and dignity to which every individual is entitled under international law.

A Trinidad newspaper published her letter, which was written in August, in December and a spokesman for the PM said it was “self-explanatory”.

Kaleidoscope Trust executive director Lance Price met Persad-Bisessar in Port of Spain earlier this year. He then wrote to her urging her to remove from the statute books those pieces of legislation that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.