Commonwealth still home to cruel laws

FOLLOWING the global controversy of the Harry and Meghan interview with its dire implications for the future of the Commonwealth, I recalled my letter printed in both the Derby Telegraph and the Nottingham Evening Post on November 3, 2011. The point of this letter was to illustrate the close connection between racial and homophobic injustice.

“The Commonwealth is a comicbook phantom of international organisations. It is the ghost that walks.”

This savage criticism was written by Greg Sheridan, the Foreign Editor of The Western Australian to coincide with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on October 30, 2011.

Such a ferocious attack on a loose association of 54 countries is

hardly surprising.

In the teeth of a clear commitment from the Commonwealth Secretary General, Kamalesh Sharma, to “tolerance, respect and understanding in matters of sexual orientation”, it is a disgrace that 36 member states continue to treat same-sex relations as a serious criminal offence.

Every day, gay people suffer vilification and punishment inflicted by cruel laws dating from colonial days.

On BBC TV, on October 30, 2011, Andrew Marr reminded the then PM, David Cameron, that people looked to this conference to take a hard line with the homophobic nations in Africa. He gave the example of Uganda where homosexuals are routinely targeted with threats, violence and

endure sentences of up to 10 years in jail prisons.

I’m grateful to Mr Cameron for confirming that British foreign aid will be withheld from countries who continue to persecute their gay citizens.

Narvel Annable, Belper