Maryan Street Labour Rainbow MP Maryan Street is pleased the United Nations has restored a reference to gay killings in a resolution condemning unjustified executions, saying it shows the UN listens when people speak up. "I'm delighted with this news," Labour's spokeswoman for Foreigh Affais says. "And I'm especially delighted the UN committee has moved so quickly. They clearly received a lot of objections from countries that were appalled that the UN should be responsible for such a breach of human rights. And I'm delighted they moved so quickly to repair it." The resolution highlights vulnerable groups and includes people belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, people belonging to indigenous communities and human rights defenders. Sexual orientation was added in 1999, over concern at the high number of murders motivated by homophobia. It was removed in November in an amendment sponsored by Benin. The move was roundly criticised by human rights groups and western leaders, and was seen by many GLBT people as the UN basically sanctioning gay murder. Earlier this month Street wrote to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressing her party's "great dismay" at the removal of sexual orientation from the resolution. "I'm really looking forward to Ban Ki-moon being able to reply to my letter now in the affirmative and say 'it's alright, we're shot of it'," she says. "It does show that they do listen when people speak up. And I'm pleased that it's had that effect." Before the vote on the new amendment, Zimbabwe's UN Ambassador Chitsaka Chipaziwa slammed the move and lumped homosexuality in with "bestiality and pedophilia and those other practices many societies would find abhorrent in their value systems". Street says it shows the conversations with Muslim countries need to continue, "The next step is to persuade those countries that have real difficulty with issues of sexual orientation that it is not something that is to be seen as equating to practices that none of us would approve of." The MP was recently at a seminar with a woman from the Ugandan Parliament, where she questioned why that nation's Government would alter its laws on homosexuality to include the death penalty, when it doesn't currently have it now. "It wasn't a fruitful conversation, I have to say, but we have to keep having them."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 22nd December 2010 - 2:17pm