(Port of Spain- Monday, June 25, 2012) - President of the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) Wesley Gibbings says politicians have replaced the monarchy in the region with the use of criminal defamation laws to punish journalists.
He was speaking on Monday during a session on the colonial legacy of criminal defamation laws in the Caribbean on day two of the three-day International Press Institute (IPI) World Congress in Trinidad and Tobago.
Gibbings said the law was introduced in the colonial days to protect the status quo of the monarchy and is now a tool of the governments.
‘Unfortunately we have had generations of leadership in the Caribbean which consider themselves to be the new monarchs. If you look at the application of criminal defamation in the Caribbean, even up to the 20th century and into the 21st century, in every single circumstance in recent memory in the English-speaking Caribbean the actions have been taken by politicians and or their agents.”
According to Gibbings, there appears to be very little change from the colonial days and he believed that journalists should not be jailed for their reports. He added that there needs to be greater awareness in the public and among journalists themselves about the implications of criminal defamation.
He also lauded the IPI’s move to adopt a declaration on the abolition of insult laws and criminal defamation legislation which will come out at the end of the Congress.
Meanwhile, Director and Representative, UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean Kwame Boafo echoed the sentiment that journalists should not be jailed when they cross the line.
“Journalists are not always saints but they are certainly not criminals.” He noted that UNESCO uses every occasion to call on its member states to take criminal defamation off their books but it could not force them to do so.
According to Boafo, recent studies indicate that that there is a “fair amount” of freedom of expression in the Caribbean but added that the struggle to abolish criminal defamation is an arduous one. He pointed out the case of Ghana, a former colony, which abolished criminal defamation in 2001 after almost 40 years of agitation.
“It’s a long struggle but you have to be persistent, you have to be consistent and you’ve got to get the support of civil society groups worldwide and regionally and particularly important, the support of international organisations like the IPI,” the UNESCO official said.
Jamaica is currently the furthest along in the efforts to abolish the law and Legal Advisor and Company Secretary of the Gleaner newspaper Shena Stubbs said they have met with the government and are “cautiously optimistic” that they will have the law off the books by year end.
As a counter to claims that journalists are rarely imprisoned for criminal defamation Stubbs declared that abolition would herald “a symbolic removal of a major shackle of freedom of expression.”
“And that is the shackle of the fear for one’s personal liberty for exercising one’s right to free speech.” According to Stubbs, once the law remains on the books it will always be an option to silence the media.
She added that the move to have the reform was not just about the media but was for each citizen since it was a matter of freedom of expression.
