Chechnya: LGBT Citizens
Lord Lexden Excerpts(7 years ago)
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The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
It is the turn of the Conservative Benches.
Lord Lexden
My Lords, is it not the case that the Russian Government actively support laws that encourage the oppression of LGBT people throughout their territories?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the Chechen Republic is a federal subject of the Russian Federation and comes under the authority of the Russian Government in Moscow, so with regard to issues in Chechnya the buck stops with President Putin. With regard to wider issues across Russia, we believe that the situation for LGBT people has deteriorated since the law banning the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors was passed in June 2013. It is a very worrying situation.
Commonwealth
Lord Lexden Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, I would like to address LGBT rights. In doing so, I inevitably reiterate some of the points made so effectively not just by her but by the noble Lords, Lord Scriven and Lord Cashman, in powerful speeches earlier. All three are to me noble friends engaged in a common enterprise. Indeed, one recurring feature of our welcome and valuable debates on the Commonwealth in recent years has been the demonstration of strong, cross-party support for action to remove the suffering and discrimination endured by millions of homosexuals in its member countries who become criminals if they give expression to the love with which they have been imbued. Some 90% of Commonwealth citizens live in jurisdictions where same-sex intimacy is a criminal offence. It must be right that on all sides of the House we should stress again today the need to put a complete end to this grave violation of human rights, which so flagrantly breaches international law and is incompatible with the Commonwealth’s own charter. When human rights are set aside, human misery inevitably follows.
That view, I believe, is widely supported on these Benches. It has been championed by my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood in many debates. Unfortunately, he cannot be here today to renew personally his call for the removal of the terrible injustice that gay people endure in 36 of the 52 countries of the Commonwealth. Many of our colleagues share these sentiments—they were expressed with trenchancy, as many noble Lords will remember, on a number of occasions from these Benches by our Lord Speaker, before he took up his office. Of course, as has been pointed out, we must be careful not to adopt an unduly strident or insensitive tone in seeking to encourage those 36 Commonwealth countries to abolish oppressive discriminatory laws—they got them from us in the days of empire, as the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, reminded us. As a Commonwealth country that has rid itself of these laws, is it not natural for us to want to extend the same legal rights and protections as we now enjoy to gay people in other Commonwealth countries, united to us by ties of kinship, affection and history? We would be untrue to ourselves if we repressed the desire to liberate others as we ourselves have been liberated. Many in the Commonwealth agree. It is now over five years since the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group unanimously recommended that Heads of Government should take steps to encourage the repeal of discriminatory laws against homosexuals.
How welcome were the words of one Head of Government—the Prime Minister of Malta—this week, in drawing attention to the blot on the Commonwealth’s reputation created by widespread disregard of the rights of LGBT people, as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, mentioned earlier. It was in Malta itself, two years ago, that the effects of the denial of those rights were brought closer than ever before to the centre of Commonwealth discussion and debate. The Kaleidoscope Trust—whose wonderful work has quite rightly been commended here today—working in partnership with the Commonwealth Equality Network, succeeded in raising LGBT issues in a number of forums during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that Malta hosted. It was an important breakthrough. The Commonwealth summit in London and Windsor next year must follow this up in a decisive manner. In Malta, the Commonwealth Equality Network’s LGBT activists from countries where gay people are criminalised were able to give first-hand accounts of the perils and dangers to which they are daily subject. Both the network and the Kaleidoscope Trust are convinced that, in their words, an approach involving those directly affected is essential for stimulating progress on LGBT rights.
My noble friend Lady Anelay will know all about this; she has shown great receptiveness to the views of LGBT organisations, whose respect she has won. They stand ready to work with the Government in creating a firm place for LGBT issues on the summit’s agenda. The Commonwealth Equality Network has proposed the inclusion of presentations by countries in the global South which have decriminalised, enabling others to learn from their experience. What is the Government’s view of that suggestion? Countries that want to decriminalise homosexuality should be able to look to the Commonwealth Secretariat for advice and guidance. For that, the secretariat will need adequate resources. That too deserves a prominent place on the summit’s agenda. This summit could provide a turning point for LGBT issues in the history of the Commonwealth. We must not let the opportunity slip.
I touch briefly on one other wholly unrelated matter. Our Commonwealth debates often include references, always couched in the warmest terms, to the Republic of Ireland. My noble friend Lord Howell made brief reference to it today. Many of us would rejoice if our close neighbour and partner in so many enterprises could be persuaded to consider coming back into the Commonwealth family. It would find an organisation utterly different from the one it left nearly 70 years ago, and 52 wholly independent states working together on terms of equality would have their collaborative endeavours enriched if the Irish Republic was also involved in them. As regards Northern Ireland, it is now accepted on all sides that there can be no change in its constitutional position without the democratic consent of its people. With its own links to many different parts of the world going back centuries, the Irish Republic would find a natural home as part of the Commonwealth’s great global partnership. This is not an issue which has so far stirred widespread interest in political circles in the Irish Republic itself. But with the Commonwealth at an important crossroads in its history, those at the helm of its affairs should surely be encouraged to reach out to all parts of these islands, for the Commonwealth is a unique family of nations. The Republic of Ireland belongs within our family.
LGBTI: Human Rights Conference
Lord Lexden Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Anelay of St Johns
The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. We have made it clear to Turkey that accession to the European Union comes only to those countries that abide by human rights rules. Of course, Turkey would have to do that. We are concerned about some of the human rights violations which have taken place, particularly with regard to freedom of expression. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister made that clear at recent meetings.
Lord Lexden (Con)
How much priority are the Government giving to their objective of securing the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the many countries where it remains against the law?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My noble friend is right to raise this. The UK Government believe that laws to criminalise consensual same-sex relations are wrong and should be changed and this underpins the work that we do, both as Ministers and throughout our posts around the world. We have, of course, carried out a lot of lobbying on this and I am very pleased to see that Mozambique recently changed its penal code so that “acts against nature”, which had previously been widely interpreted as homosexuality, have now been decriminalised.
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
Lord Lexden Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lexden (Con)
The communiqué issued at the end of the Malta meeting included a ringing reaffirmation of the Commonwealth’s commitment to human rights, declaring them to be,
“equal, indivisible, interdependent … and universal”.
However, we were entitled to expect those fine sentiments to be accompanied by an explicit indication of the need for determined action in an area to which I am glad that Members of this House and the other place now regularly return, as has happened in this debate—I refer to the criminalisation of homosexuality in the overwhelming majority of Commonwealth countries. Gay people in both Houses of our Parliament have a responsibility to encourage change among our Commonwealth friends and partners.
Gay people in this country have witnessed a transformation in their position in our society, securing an acceptance, understanding and legal status that they have never had before in our history. It is natural for us to want to extend the benefits of change that we have gained over the last 50 years to gay people in Commonwealth countries, united to us by ties of kinship, affection and history.
This is not a question of seeking to impose British liberal values on other countries where earlier intolerant, illiberal British values were planted in days of Empire. The values that we promote are universal and international, embodied in the UN charter and, more recently, in the Commonwealth’s own charter. It was good that, in Malta, the issues that concern LGBT people so deeply were discussed in the Commonwealth People’s Forum; it would be better still to have them drawn into the main sessions of the conference itself.
It is now four years since the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group unanimously recommended that,
“Heads of Government should take steps to encourage the repeal of discriminatory laws”,
against homosexuals. This matters not just as a fundamental human rights question, but as a precondition for relieving so many Commonwealth friends from the pain and suffering of AIDS, to which my noble friend Lord Tugendhat made reference. The EPG was quite explicit on that point, saying that,
“discriminatory laws … impede the effective response of CW countries to the HIV/AIDS epidemic”.
I repeat the statistic that my noble friend gave us: countries of the Commonwealth comprise 60% of people living with HIV globally, while representing 30% of the world’s population. It is a statistic to keep always in the forefront of the mind. CHOGM adopted the important EPG report in 2012. What has become of it?
We all know that change is unlikely to come quickly everywhere throughout the Commonwealth, but gay people hope and pray for the creation of sustained, serious momentum for change.