The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Prof. Philip Alston has described Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Oquaye, as deluded over his comments on gay rights.
Prof. Oquaye has on several occasions expressed his reservations about promoting gay rights in Ghana.
Addressing a group of religious leaders who paid a courtesy call on him in February this year, Prof. Oquaye insisted that the current crop of parliamentary leadership would not endorse an act that majority of Ghanaians abhor.
“If you tell me that a man must sleep with a man so as to show his human rights for Ghana, I can assure you that our Parliament is a real micropause of the rule of Ghana. Ghanaians do not support gay rights and nobody is going to make any law that will support this kind of thing.”
Speaking in an interview after undertaking a Human Rights fact-finding visit to Ghana to assess government efforts to eradicating poverty, Prof. Alston said Prof. Oquaye’s comment is unacceptable because there is a significant gay population in Ghana.
“I believe that if he thinks there is not a very significant proportion of gay people in Ghana, he is deluding himself. You cannot wish away a physical fact. The percentage of gay people in any population is significant.
“I don’t think it is appropriate for politicians to publicly align themselves with hateful positions against any other population…I think if he comes out and says that people with a certain kind of sexual orientation are not allowed to be themselves in this country that is equally unacceptable, that is what human rights are all about,” Prof. Alston stated.
Starrnews
