OT 335: E-mail from Carlene Alexander, Chair, Equality Cayman
I write to bring your attention to Equality
Cayman's 18th March 2009 letter to
Gillian Merron, MP and the FCO regarding an urgent
issue on the
The Foreign Affairs Committee's review of this matter and ensuring that it is dealt with as a matter of urgency by the FCO would be greatly appreciated.
27 March 2009
Letter to Gillian Merron MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office from Carlene Alexander
I write to you on behalf of Equality
Cayman, human rights organisation in the Cayman Islands which has been formed
in direct response to the
We are writing to you now as a matter of
urgency to request a meeting (via telephone conference call) with you or other
senior members of the team in the FCO who are dealing with the
We are approaching the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) directly now, after a month of appealing to the
Cayman Islands Government who have failed to adequately respond. We, on behalf
of the people of the
The Cayman Islands Government (CIG) misrepresented the view of the people of the Cayman Islands during negotiations with the United Kingdom on our Constitution, ultimately accepting a Bill of Rights with limited anti-discrimination protection because of the influence of a minority interest group in the Cayman Island's religious preferences which expressly demanded that the Cayman Government be allowed to continue to discriminate against gays in the Cayman Islands in areas covered by a free standing right to non-discrimination. The result of this misrepresentation and disproportionate influence causes significant harm to everyone in the Cayman Islands whose protection from discrimination has now effectively also been marginalised in order to discriminate against gays and transsexuals. The people who are particularly affected by this include all minority and vulnerable groups such as the disabled, elderly, women, and gays who now continue to have neither adequate legal nor constitutional protection from discrimination.
We confirmed that this position (proposed
by the CIG and approved by the FCO) on the Bill of Rights is unrepresentative
of the people of the
In just 3 weeks, Equality Cayman has gathered over 600 signatures on a petition which urges the Cayman Government to change the Referendum Bill to allow a choice between the now limited and the initial free standing right to non-discrimination.
As a
Our Constitution and Bill of Rights
required the
The limited Section 16 as currently
proposed does not meet the
In addition to falling short of the United
Kingdom's commitments under the Organisation of American States (OAS)
resolution AG/Res 2435 (XXXVIII-O/08) on "Human Rights, sexual orientation and
gender identity", the
On behalf of the people of the Cayman
Islands who our organisation represents, we hope to work together with the FCO
and Cayman Islands Government to bring our Constitution to a position which is
both acceptable to the majority of the Caymanian
people and also in line with the
18 March 2009
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