RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Rudolph Hanamji, co-chair and co-founder of PrideTT, has sharply crit­i­cised Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­cus­ing her of be­ing mis­in­formed about the is­sues fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. Hanamji ar­gued that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s crit­i­cism of for­mer US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s poli­cies was a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty to set her­self apart from the cur­rent gov­ern­ment.

“To say an­oth­er leader’s tenure was a com­plete dis­as­ter was un­fair. Biden’s poli­cies have ben­e­fit­ed Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, the Caribbean di­as­po­ra, and those with in­ter­ests in the US econ­o­my. I don’t agree with her stance,” Hanamji said.

On Mon­day, while con­grat­u­lat­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on his in­au­gu­ra­tion, the Op­po­si­tion Leader said Biden, “Fo­cused on push­ing a woke, ex­treme left-wing agen­da that of­fend­ed ba­sic com­mon sense and moral­i­ty ... dis­ori­ent­ed and mu­ti­lat­ed chil­dren, cen­sored and can­celled dis­sent­ing views, dis­par­aged re­li­gious and con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues.”

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Hanamji dis­missed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s fo­cus on is­sues like gen­der re­as­sign­ment surgery, call­ing it ir­rel­e­vant to T&T.

“These mat­ters are one-off oc­cur­rences. To speak about them as though they are hap­pen­ing in mass num­bers is mis­lead­ing and dis­con­nect­ed from our re­al­i­ty,” he said. “We’ve had no cas­es like that in over a decade. What we need to fo­cus on are the re­al is­sues af­fect­ing the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty here.”

He high­light­ed the ex­clu­sion of LGBTQ+ peo­ple from the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act as a crit­i­cal con­cern.

“Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said she’s in­ter­est­ed in equal­i­ty for all cit­i­zens, yet queer per­sons can­not ac­cess jus­tice be­cause the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act ex­cludes them. That’s where her fo­cus should be.”

Hanamji em­pha­sised the ur­gent need to ad­dress bul­ly­ing and dis­crim­i­na­tion against LGBTQ+ youth.

“We re­cent­ly lost a child be­cause they were bul­lied for be­ing per­ceived as gay. These are the is­sues Per­sad-Bisses­sar should be speak­ing about. Thou­sands of chil­dren are bul­lied every day be­cause some­one be­lieves they are queer, and one life lost is too many. If these is­sues were tak­en more se­ri­ous­ly, no child would face dis­crim­i­na­tion,” he said, cit­ing da­ta from the Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion.

Hanamji al­so called for more re­sources to sup­port young­sters.

“We need more coun­sel­lors in schools. My life was made bet­ter be­cause of An­gela Ifill, my guid­ance coun­sel­lor at Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege. There should be guid­ance of­fi­cers trained to help chil­dren,” he said.

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to oth­er pub­lic fig­ures, Hanamji said, “If peo­ple like Jow­elle [De Souza] don’t have time to ad­vo­cate to save lives, then I would rather they stay qui­et. Peo­ple are dy­ing in queer spaces, and not all of us have stood up for them.”

De Souza on Wednes­day said she was not of­fend­ed by the UNC leader’s com­ments and agreed chil­dren should not make de­ci­sions on re­as­sign­ment surgery.

Hanamji was crit­i­cal of what he de­scribed as the State’s fail­ure to al­lo­cate re­sources ef­fec­tive­ly to tack­le these is­sues.