Rodney Croome . gay advocate

Freed

The men gaoled in Fiji for gay sex have been freed on bail.

Yesterday I was the happy recipient of a call from an even happier Iqbal Khan, the barrister representing two men who were gaoled last week in Fiji for consenting private adult gay sex.

Mr Khan called to say that he had managed to have the men released on bail from a prison which he described as "hell".

According to Khan his clients were bailed by a single High Court judge on the basis that the prospect of an acquittal is good and that the laws under which the two men were gaoled have been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee in a 1994 case about similar laws which then prevailed in the Australian state of Tasmania.

More details of how Thomas McCoskar 55, an Australian, and Dhirendra Nadan, 23 a Fijian, came to be in gaol are found in this article from the Fiji Times.

The two men have been bailed to re-appear on April 28th at which time a date for appeal will be set.

According to Khan the appeal hearing will involve representatives of both the Fiji Human Rights Commission and the Fiji Attorney-General.

"We expect the appeal hearing to resolve not only the status of Mr McCoskar and Mr Nadan, but also the status of the laws under which they were arrested."

Khan will be arguing that Fiji's anti-gay criminal laws are void under the nation's constitutitional guarantee of equality before the law.

Meanwhile, as you read this, on the other side of the world Fiji gay activist, Carlos Perera, is polishing the speech he will give later this evening (AEST) to the UN General Assembly.

To illustrate the persecution of LGBT people around the world, Perera will cite three examples, including the recent gaolings in Fiji.

In so doing he will become the first person ever to address the UN General Assembly on the issue of LGBT human rights.

Momentous is an under-statement.