[CTC] Dear Gay Ambassadors, Be Straight About Trade Deal

Thu Jun 11 06:00:00 PDT 2015

https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/06/11/op-ed-dear-gay-ambassadors-be-straight-about-trade-deal
COMMENTARY <https://www.advocate.com/commentary>

Op-ed: Dear Gay Ambassadors, Be Straight About Trade Deal
Activists Cleve Jones and Jerame Davis ask: Why are America's out ambassadors arguing in favor of giving special 'favored nation' status to virulently anti-LGBT countries, including one that stones gays to death? 
BY JERAME DAVIS AND CLEVE JONESJUNE 11 2015 3:00 AM ET 

Recently, a number of gay ambassadors to host countries that would be signatories to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a sibling trade deal co-signed an op-ed here in The Advocate <http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/06/09/out-ambassadors-global-trade-agreement-will-lift-lgbt-lives> that made bold claims about using U.S. trade policy to promote LGBT human rights around the world. We would like to set the record straight on this issue.

The TPP will do nothing to promote LGBT equality in signatory countries. In fact, it is our fear that if the TPP is enacted, we will see further slippage of human rights for LGBT people around the globe.

There have been several claims that the TPP contains “enforceable human rights standards,” and that we needn’t worry about countries like Malaysia — where LGBT people can be jailed for 20 years or more — or Brunei — where the newly adopted penal code prescribes stoning LGBT people to death — being included in the deal, because once enacted, the TPP standards will be enforced. No one has offered proof that these standards actually exist.

In June of last year, four national LGBT organizations — Pride at Work, the Human Rights Campaign, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the National Center for Transgender Equality — co-signed a letter to President Obama demanding that Brunei and Malaysia be removed from the TPP until their laws that target LGBT people and women were revoked. We did not get a response. In February of this year, Pride at Work called upon the newly appointed Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBT Persons — a signatory to the referenced op-ed — to address this issue as well. Once again, we heard crickets in response. 

Why are Malaysia and Brunei even being considered as signatories to the TPP if their laws aren’t currently up to standard? Substantive negotiations for TPP have been ongoing since 2010, yet Brunei enacted its “stone the gays” law just last year <http://www.advocate.com/world/2014/04/30/brunei-phasing-antigay-law-will-soon-allow-death-stoning>. Does it make sense that these "human rights standards," which will supposedly lift up LGBT lives, will in fact be "enforceable" if Brunei is willing to pass this heinous penal code in the last stretches of the negotiations for TPP? Why would the tiny nation jeopardize billions of dollars in potential profits if leaders actually thought there would be repercussions to these draconian laws? Signing this deal will send a message to the world that you can abuse and oppress LGBT people and still have preferential access to coveted U.S. markets.

Furthermore, despite repeated requests for the language of these supposed standards, we have yet to see a single word of the text that proponents of the TPP claim exists. The secrecy surrounding TPP, and its classification as a top-secret document, means that no one who has actually read the text is allowed to talk about the specifics in the language. But those who have read it tell us that they cannot find "enforceable human rights standards" in the more than 1,100 pages of the deal. Those inside sources suggest that we should be concerned. Leaked drafts of various portions of the TPP also contain no such language.

How is the administration promoting “transparency, public participation, accountability, and the rule of law” by signing secret deals that no member of the public can view, and which and stand to benefit countries that “punish” LGBT people and female rape victims with death by stoning?

To drive the point home, when the Senate passed the fast-track bill that will enable the TPP to move forward, it included a strong, enforceable antislavery provision that was directed at Malaysia. Our own U.S. State Department, for which all but one of these ambassadors works, lists Malaysia as a Tier 3 human trafficking nation — the worst classification.

But the administration <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/22/senate-passes-fast-track_n_7425614.html> and proponents of TPP in the House <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/house-trade-trafficking_n_7446078.html> oppose this provision and are working to remove it. Are we really to believe that LGBT human rights will be protected, but the slave trade will be ignored? Is giving tacit approval to slavery an “enforceable human rights standard?”

Our position as the largest economy in the world gives us unique power to shine a light on the plight of the oppressed worldwide. "People before profits" should be our guiding principle in every trade negotiation, but that is not the case with the TPP, regardless of the misinformation campaign being waged by its proponents.

The op-ed from the ambassadors is sadly yet another move by the administration to spin the horrendous truth about this monstrous deal. “Trust us” is not good enough when the lives of our extended community are at stake. Show us the text. Without it, these half-promises and pinky-swears aren’t worth the time it took to read them.

JERAME DAVIS is the Executive Director of Pride At Work, the LGBT labor organization which has led the LGBT response against the TPP. CLEVE JONES is the founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. He works as a community organizer for UNITE HERE, the hospitality workers' union.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20150611/f3609b87/attachment.htm>