An Australian tourist and a Fijian man sent to prison for two years in Fiji April 6 for engaging in consensual gay sex in private have been released on bail after appealing their convictions.
Tourist Thomas Maxwell McCosker, 55, a retired university teacher from the state of Victoria, and Dhirendra Nandan, 23, a deliveryman, were convicted of ‘unnatural offence’ and ‘indecent practice between males’ after pleading guilty to having sex in an apartment in the city of Nadi.
Magistrate Syed Mukhtar Shah called their crimes ‘something so disgusting that it would make any person vomit.’
Police became aware of the men’s activities after McCosker reported a theft of $1,500 in Australian currency. When police questioned Nandan in connection with the theft, he reported that he and McCosker were making pornographic photos and videos together to sell on the Internet. Eighteen of the pictures were used as evidence in court.
McCosker had to surrender his passport and will remain in Fiji during the appeal proceedings. His lawyer, Iqbal Khan, will argue that Fiji’s ban on gay sex was nullified by the nation’s 1998 Constitution which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and enshrines a right to privacy.
At Nandan’s bail-application hearing, however, Director of Public Prosecutions Navinesh Nand argued that the sexual-orientation protections are overridden by another section of the Constitution which states that the right to personal privacy ‘may be made subject to such limitations prescribed by law as are reasonable and justifiable in a free and democratic society.’
— Rex Wockner