An appeals court in Trinidad and Tobago has recriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in the country.

Jason Jones, an LGBTQ activist from Trinidad and Tobago who currently lives in the U.K., in 2017 challenged Sections 13 and 16 of the country’s Sexual Offenses Act. High Court Justice Devindra Rampersad the following year found them unconstitutional.

The country’s government appealed Rampersad’s ruling.

Court of Appeal Justices Nolan Bereaux and Charmaine Pemberton overturned it on March 25. The Daily Express newspaper reported Justice Vasheist Kokaram dissented.

“As an LGBTQ+ citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, this regressive judgement has ripped up my contract as a citizen of T&T and again makes me an unapprehended criminal in the eyes of the law,” said Jones in a statement he posted to social media. “The TT Court of Appeal has effectively put a target on the back of LGBTQIA+ people and made us lower class citizens in our own country.”

Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, and Dominica are among the countries that have decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations in recent years.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2021 issued a decision that said Jamaica must repeal its colonial-era sodomy law. The Jamaican Supreme Court in 2023 ruled against a gay man who challenged it.

A judge on St. Vincent and the Grenadines’s top court last year dismissed two cases that challenged the country’s sodomy laws.

Jones in his statement said he “will be exercising my right of appeal and taking this matter to the” Privy Council, an appellate court for British territories that can also consider cases from Commonwealth countries.

King Charles III is not Trinidad and Tobago’s head of the state, but the country remains part of the Commonwealth.

“I hope justice will be done and these heinous discriminatory laws, a legacy of British colonialism, will be removed by the British courts,” said Jones.

A transgender woman with HIV who participated in an anti-government protest in Cuba in 2021 has been released from prison.

Luz Escobar, an independent Cuban journalist who lives in Madrid, on Saturday posted a picture of Brenda Díaz and her mother on her Facebook page.

“Brenda Díaz, a Cuban political prisoner from July 11, was released a few hours ago,” wrote Escobar.

Authorities arrested Díaz in Güira de Melena in Artemisa province after she participated in an anti-government protest on July 11, 2021. She is one of the hundreds of people who authorities took into custody during and after the demonstrations.

A Havana court in 2022 sentenced Díaz to 14 years in prison. She appealed her sentence, but Cuba’s People’s Supreme Court upheld it.

Escobar in her Facebook post said authorities “forced” Díaz to “be in a men’s prison, one of the tortures she suffered.” Mariela Castro, the daughter of former Cuban President Raúl Castro who directs the country’s National Center for Sexual Education, dismissed reports that Díaz suffered mistreatment in prison. A source in Cuba who spoke with the Washington Blade on Saturday said Díaz was held in a prison for people with HIV.

The Cuban government earlier this week began to release prisoners after President Joe Biden said the U.S. would move to lift its designation that the country is a state sponsor of terrorism. The Vatican helped facilitate the deal.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is Cuban American, on Wednesday criticized the deal during his confirmation hearing to become the next secretary of state. President-elect Donald Trump, whose first administration made the terrorism designation in January 2021, will take office on Monday.

A Black transgender woman from Chicago disappeared last month while attending a yoga retreat in the Bahamas.

A flyer the Royal Bahamas Police Force has distributed says Taylor Casey, 42, was last seen on June 19 on Paradise Island, which is adjacent to Nassau, the country’s capital.

Casey’s family in a press release said employees at the Sivanandra Ashram Yoga Retreat she was attending reported her missing on June 20 “when she failed to attend that day’s classes.” 

Casey’s mother, Colette Seymore, traveled to Paradise Island after her daughter disappeared.

The press release, which advocates in Chicago released ahead of a press conference on Thursday, notes “a search of the area and conversations with the Bahamian authorities left Ms. Colette Seymore with more questions than answers.”

Thursday is Casey’s 42nd birthday.

Seymore is among those who spoke at Thursday’s press conference.

“My child has been missing for almost three weeks,” said Seymore in the press release. “My family, friends, and I are distraught! I am pleading with everyone to call your elected officials and demand the FBI lead this investigation and bring her home safe and sound.”

The Windy City Times described Casey as “a fixture of Chicago’s transgender community and a beloved youth advocate.” Casey has also practiced yoga for 15 years, and went to the retreat “as part of a long-term goal to deepen her yoga practice.”

“She was excited to be participating in the yoga teacher training program and looking forward to sharing her experience with others when she returned,” noted a second press advisory her family released this week.

The Nassau Guardian, a Bahamian newspaper, on June 27 reported authorities found Casey’s cell phone in the ocean, but her other belongings were still in her room at the retreat. 

A spokesperson for Taylor’s family told the Washington Blade they have reached out to the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas for assistance. Eyewitness News Bahamas, a Bahamian newscast, on June 28 reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation is working with Bahamian authorities to investigate Taylor’s disappearance.

The Bahamas Organization of LGBTI Affairs has also offered its support to Taylor’s family and assistance to authorities.

“There is still hope,” Alexus D’Marco, the group’s executive director, told Eyewitness News Bahamas. “They’re just looking for that piece of hope and to have some closure to finding their loved one.” 

D’Marco also called for Bahamian authorities to do more to investigate missing persons’ cases in the country.

“A human being is missing, and that is the whole thing about this,” she told Eyewitness News Bahamas. “Regardless of her gender identity, being identified as a trans person, she’s still a human being and she’s still a visitor to our shores.” 

Anyone with information about Casey’s disappearance can call the Royal Bahamas Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department at (242) 502-9991, (242) 502-9975, or (202) 502-9976.