Caribbean Beat — July/August 2017 (#146)

doctoral thesis was on the issue, and has
since become a textbook, The Survival of
Indigenous Rights in Guyana. Bulkan has
also, in recent times, and in collaboration
with colleagues at the University of the
West Indies, launched two potentially
paradigm-altering cases in the courts of
Belize and Guyana on LGBT rights.
Arif Bulkan grew up in
Guyana during the Burnham era.
“This was a menacing period,” he
recalls, “where amid economic hardship,
free speech was stifled, political rallies
routinely broken up by paid thugs, and
opponents of the regime were harassed,
bullied, and pursued with the full force of
the law.”
The natural environment made a tremendous
impression on Bulkan and his
family. His sister Janette, an anthropologist,
is an ardent activist who campaigns
for the preservation of Guyana’s rainforests.
Even his brothers, whom Bulkan
describes as businessmen, are vocal in
their condemnation of political corruption,
and have paid a price for it.
His own path to his present position
was not a straight one, despite his gift
for activism and combining law practice
with social conscience. “This may sound
like I always wanted a career in law,” says
Bulkan, “but in truth that happened by
accident. For as long as I remember, what
I really wanted to do was write fiction.”
His activism grew as his education
grew. He began university in Guyana,
won a scholarship to UWI, another to University
College London, and yet another
to Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto,
Canada. When he returned to Guyana in
1990, after his UWI education, he became
involved in political activism. Then on
returning from the UK and Canada, he
worked as an attorney, magistrate, and in
the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions,
as well as lecturing part time at
the University of Guyana. During one of
these sojourns, in 2002, he was hired by
the government of Guyana to work on the
revision of the Amerindian Act.
Annette Arjoon-Martins, one of the
co-founders of the Guyana Marine Turtle
Conservation Society, credits him with
being an inspiration to her personally, and
of enormous help in educating indigenous
populations with regard to their rights. “I
have known Arif all my life,” she says. “He
has always been an inspiration. When I
started my career as a conservationist,
he was a young lawyer. He was very gracious,
assisting us as we needed, always
pro bono. When I established the GMTS
in 2000, he was one of the first people I
went to.”
He’s done the same for other groups.
Joel Simpson, founder of the Guyana Society
Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination
(SASOD), remembers Bulkan’s
Bulkan’s path to his present position was not
a straight one, despite his gift for activism and
combining law practice with social conscience
presence and participation in the initial
meetings which led to its formation when
Simpson was a student at the University
of Guyana in 2001, and Bulkan was a
lecturer. This area of endeavour, which
has occupied Bulkan for the last decade,
he pursues in conjunction with his UWI
colleagues Tracy Robinson and Douglas
Mendes, and the organisation they cofounded,
the University of the West Indies
Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP).
Outside of activism and teaching,
though, Bulkan also works hands-on
as an advocate. He is the lead attorney
in one of the two cases initiated by
U-RAP, both of which could change the
landscape of LGBT rights in the Caribbean:
Caleb Orozco vs the Attorney General
in Belize, and McEwan, Clarke, Fraser,
Persaud, and SASOD vs the Attorney
General in Guyana. Bulkan and his team
planned to initiate legal action in Belize,
since its legislative environment was
conducive to the kind of litigation pursued
(the decriminalisation of same-sex acts).
But, as they were about to file, he says,
the Guyana case of cross-dressers being
arrested under vagrancy laws came to
public attention. “These laws are always
selectively applied to the poorest of the
poor,” he says. “Always those least able to
navigate the legal system, and they end
up pleading guilty.” Similar cases against
cross-dressers were also initiated in Trinidad
and Tobago in recent years.
The Belize case established the unconstitutionality
(in Belize) of the criminalisation
of sexual intimacy between consenting
adults of the same sex. The Guyana
case, which challenged the archaic Guyanese
law about “the wearing of female
attire” by men in public, and the inverse
for women, is still being determined via
the appeals process.
LGBT rights are a contentious area in
the Caribbean, but it may be more noise
than substance. “The debates on this
tend to be hijacked by the very vocal, but
we have no sense they are the majority,”
Bulkan says. “Polls done by Caribbean
Development Research Services of Barbados
have shown a shift in sentiment on
the issue. Younger people are more tolerant
— though this is a word I don’t like.”
Bulkan’s UWI colleague Dr Sharon
Le Gall describes him as one of those
rare people who is both a teacher and a
scholar. Apart from his book on indigenous
people’s rights, he has co-authored
another on constitutional law. “I think
Arif’s major contribution is still to be
felt,” said Le Gall. “This is work with his
students, of whom he demands the highest
standards. The effects of his work as a
teacher and exemplar will be realised far
in the future.” n
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