Scrap all criminal defamation laws – Nigel Hughes

Last Updated on Sunday, 8 September 2024, 19:12 by Writer

Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), Nigel Hughes wants all aspects of criminal defamation to be removed from Guyana’s law books and no enactment of any new such legislation such as amendments to the Cybercrime Act.

“The old Act should be repealed and current Act should be repealed and an Act, which is consistent with the 2001 Budapest Convention laid in Parliament, after a white paper,” he told Demerara Waves Online News. Human rights activists have also expressed concern about the Budapest Convention.

Except for Grenada, no other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country has ratified the Budapest Convention, also known as the Cybercrime Convention, dealing with illegal access to a computer, illegal interception of information, data interference, system interference and misuse of devices.

In relation to the the International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes , the AFC leader recommended that that be laid before the National Assembly with a view to adoption.

Mr Hughes said he was wary of government’s plan to amend the Cybercrime Act to, according to Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, make it consistent with the almost finalised draft International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes. He said already the existing Cybercrime Act, without amendments, was being used by the government to go after political opponents. “It has already done that; they will further encroach by extending the scope of areas for criminal sanction for political purposes and no other reason,” said Mr Hughes, a criminal and civil lawyer. He said the amendment to the Cybercrime Act would become another “tool” for the State to prosecute, stifle and get rid of critics and would violate Guyana’s Constitution.

“Particularly, in the light of what has happened under the Cybercrime Act, the way in which it has been deployed, how the prosecution of the State has been used, we have very grave reservations, very, very grave reservations about anything looking like the expansion of the Cybercrime Bill,” he said.

In 2013, the then People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration did not give a clear commitment to the International Press Institute that criminal defamation laws would be repealed. The People’s National Congress Reform-led coalition administration had in June 2020 said the dissolution of Parliament had prevented the repeal of the criminal defamation laws. That administration had earlier in its term enacted the Cybercrime Act, despite strenuous objections by the then PPPC in opposition, human rights activists and the Guyana Press Association.

New York-based political activist Rickford Burke and two former reporters, Gary Eleazar and Alex Wayne, had been charged with criminal defamation allegedly against a businessman.

The Defamation Act allows people to file civil lawsuits.

The new draft UN Convention states that several human rights will be protected. “Nothing in this Convention shall be interpreted as permitting suppression of human rights or fundamental freedoms, including the rights related to the freedoms of expression, conscience, opinion, religion or belief, peaceful assembly and association, in accordance and in a manner consistent with applicable international human rights law.” The proposed convention lists several offences including theft or fraud, child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation, solicitation or grooming for the purpose of committing a sexual offence against a child, non-consensual dissemination of intimate images, laundering of proceeds of crime, illegal interception of non-public transmissions of electronic data, interference with electronic data and misuse of devices.