Thailand's shameful rejection of human rights

The Nation, 8 March 2011

Sexual orientation and gender identity have resurfaced as hot issues internationally and locally.

This week at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), dozens of countries will issue a joint statement on ending violence and related human rights violations against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT).

The Sexual Diversity Network and allied organisations last week sent a letter to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to request that Thailand co-signs the statement. Their renewed effort came after a campaign last year on the UN resolution on extrajudicial killings, in which Thailand infamously abstained when a group of gay-hostile countries managed to vote out "sexual orientation" as a specific ground for protection in the resolution, and when a different group of countries successfully voted to reinstate it.

Thailand also kept silent on another joint statement in 2008 calling for an end to the criminalisation of LGBTs. The country's lack of moral courage on these issues cannot escape notice as it presently chairs the UNHRC, where later this year its human rights record will come up for scrutiny in the universal periodic review.

The Foreign Ministry claims these are culturally sensitive issues and doesn't want to ruffle the feathers of countries opposed to the rights of LGBTs. The unbroken series of abstentions on the issues, however, sit uncomfortably with Article 30 of the Constitution's prohibition against discrimination on the grounds of sex, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

If they do not wish the Organisation of Islamic Conference to be on Thailand's case regarding the deep South - or any country regarding any issue, for that matter - what is needed is better respect for human rights across all regions and issues - not a quid-pro-quo diplomacy. Although UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's comment that "Human rights are human rights everywhere, for everyone" was made on the issue of sexual orientation, it applies equally to our Muslim brothers and sisters in the South.

Just as we don't sacrifice the rights of women to please the Taleban, putting the rights of LGBTs on the line is beyond the pale. The rights of no group are dispensable. That's why it's called universal rights. However controversial an issue may be, we cannot shy away from doing what's right. Sitting on the fence on LGBT issues is discrimination by omission.

Locally, LGBT issues emerged last week when an episode of the popular Channel 9 programme "Khon Khon Khon" was supposedly banned because of its exploration of the lives of transgender participants in a reality show whose top prize is free sexual reassignment surgery. The reported reason for the ban was that it might encourage children to become transgender and want to have these procedures.

It is incredible that, in this age, some people still believe that sexual orientation or gender identity can be changed by television viewing. If this was "contagious", the censorship board would already be transgender, and LGBTs could be "cured" by watching "straight" television. Such arbitrary censorship of a programme that investigates the lives of LGBT Thais smacks of hypocrisy when television abounds with outrageous portrayals of them as laughing stocks.

Equally hypocritical, however, are those demanding that sexual reassignment surgery be state-subsidised under the flawed reasoning that transgenders suffer from what is classified by the World Health Organisation as a psychological disorder called Gender Identity Disorder (GID). Such a classification begs the question how a mental condition can be treated by surgery.

Although this WHO classification enables some transgenders in the West to receive free healthcare services, it stigmatises and dehumanises every transgender worldwide. This perverse effect can be seen nowhere clearer than here in Thailand, where many Thai transgenders have "psychosis" written on their military discharge documents, which must be shown every time they apply for a job. The assault on human dignity mobilises the global transgender community into a campaign to remove GID from the next version of WHO classifications, just as homosexuality was removed in 1973.

Although some transgenders are willing to endure humiliation or anything in order to get surgery, not all take such a self-defeating attitude. Members of the Thai Transgender Alliance insist that transgenderism has no connection with psychiatric defects, and a transgender is as psychologically healthy as anyone.

They are firm, however, that choosing one's own gender and sexual expression is a matter of human rights and dignity, and they would rather find their own ways to surgery - if desired - than be branded as mentally sick just to get government-subsidised operations.

Such moral integrity is admirable. Perhaps the Foreign Ministry can learn a thing or two from them before again trading human rights for political expediency.

Ban Ki-moon made it abundantly clear: "Yes, we recognise that social attitudes run deep. Yes, social change often comes only with time. Yet, let there be no confusion: where there is tension between cultural attitudes and universal human rights, universal human rights must carry the day. Personal disapproval, even society's disapproval, is no excuse to arrest, detain, imprison, harass or torture anyone - ever."