Advocacy group mounts court challenge against buggery law

The Supreme Court will on June 25 hear an application challenging the constitutionality of the buggery law.

The claim was filed by United States-based advocacy group AIDS-Free World on behalf of Jamaican Javed Jaghai.

The group is asking the court to determine if the anti-sodomy law breaches rights guaranteed under the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms which was passed into law in 2011.

In a release the advocacy group noted that the Charter explicitly guarantees the right to privacy.

However, it pointed out that the Charter also preserves the 1864 anti-sodomy law.

The group noted that under this law, intimacy between two adult men in privacy is an offence which can carry a prison term for up to 10 years at hard labour.

It is contending that is a contradiction.

The group is arguing that under the Charter it is illegal to enforce the anti-sodomy law as it breaches the right to privacy.

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