© Reuters. Members of the homosexual and lesbian group in Mauritius participate in a march for homosexual rights and gender equality within the city of Rose Hill June 2, 2007. REUTERS/Jean Alain Laportine/ File Photograph
By Villen Anganan
PORT-LOUIS (Reuters) -The Supreme Courtroom of Mauritius has struck out a colonial-era regulation criminalising same-sex relations, bucking a development elsewhere in Africa the place a string of nations have handed or proposed anti-LGBT laws.
In a ruling on two instances introduced by members of the homosexual group within the Indian Ocean island nation, the courtroom stated part 250 of the Mauritian prison code, which dated again to 1898 throughout British colonial rule, was unconstitutional.
“Part 250 was not launched in Mauritius to replicate any indigenous Mauritian values however was inherited as a part of our colonial historical past from Britain,” the courtroom stated in a ruling handed down on Wednesday.
Jean-Daniel Wong, the supervisor of the Arc-en-Ciel Collective, the biggest LGBT advocacy group in Mauritius, stated the ruling was an enormous aid.
“As an out homosexual man in Mauritius, personally, there was type of this Damocles sword hanging over our head,” he instructed Reuters. “There’s nonetheless quite a bit to do however … we place confidence in our public establishments.”
He stated the group’s subsequent priorities have been to attain authorized recognition for transgender folks, legalise same-sex unions and battle hate crimes primarily based on sexuality.
The federal government, the defendant within the instances, had stated that whereas it was sympathetic to the arguments put ahead by LGBT residents, the values of wider society meant that the time was not proper to alter the regulation by parliament.
However the Supreme Courtroom stated the previous regulation “criminalises the one pure method for the plaintiffs and different gay males to have sexual activity, whereas heterosexual males are permitted the appropriate to have sexual activity in a method which is pure to them”.
UNAIDS, the United Nations company accountable for combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic, stated the ruling was an vital step ahead for public well being and in direction of equal rights and respect for the LGBT group.
The Mauritian ruling stands in sharp distinction to developments elsewhere in Africa, most not too long ago in Uganda which handed one of many world’s harshest anti-LGBT legal guidelines in Could, imposing the demise penalty for some same-sex acts.
Uganda’s transfer triggered a global outcry and prompted some donors to chop assist. However lawmakers in quite a lot of different African international locations together with Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan are working to herald related laws.
Supporters of such legal guidelines say same-sex relations are unnatural and that Africans should resist what they see because the imposition of Western values. Rights teams repeatedly say anti-LGBT legal guidelines will not be African however have been imposed by former imperial powers.
