KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Youth Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans de­bat­ing the need for cy­ber­bul­ly­ing leg­is­la­tion yes­ter­day turned to re­al-world events for em­pha­sis, point­ing to the death threats re­cent­ly made against Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne as proof of how quick­ly on­line abuse can es­ca­late.

Last week­end, Browne re­port­ed re­ceiv­ing ex­plic­it death threats on Face­book, in­clud­ing mes­sages tar­get­ing his chil­dren.

The is­sue sur­faced dur­ing a con­tri­bu­tion from St George’s Col­lege stu­dent Ris­hon Warn­er at the Na­tion­al Youth Par­lia­ment De­bate. Rep­re­sent­ing Port-of-Spain South, Warn­er said he had been on his way to the mock sit­ting when he saw the news­pa­per sto­ry.

“Mr Speak­er, if a for­mer min­is­ter can get death threats, who are the or­di­nary cit­i­zens of Trinidad & To­ba­go?” Warn­er asked. “I have to call out the Gov­ern­ment’s un­will­ing­ness to mod­ernise leg­is­la­tion. It seems as though they came here to say no.”

He ques­tioned how many peo­ple con­tin­ued to be ha­rassed be­cause of the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to de­ci­sive­ly ad­dress cy­ber­bul­ly­ing, adding that it baf­fled him that any­one would ar­gue against ur­gent pro­tec­tions for cit­i­zens.

The mo­tion be­fore the House was pi­lot­ed by Youth Op­po­si­tion Leader Kachay Mar­cano, who called for leg­is­la­tion and da­ta-dri­ven poli­cies to ad­dress the rise in on­line ha­rass­ment. Mar­cano’s mo­tion out­lined the harm­ful use of tech­nol­o­gy to in­tim­i­date, hu­mil­i­ate or threat­en oth­ers, not­ing that vic­tims of­ten suf­fer anx­i­ety, de­pres­sion, so­cial iso­la­tion or sui­ci­dal thoughts.

“The Gov­ern­ment has a du­ty to pro­tect the cit­i­zens of Trinidad & To­ba­go against cy­ber­bul­ly­ing,” she said, ar­gu­ing that it dam­ages so­cial co­he­sion and cre­ates un­safe en­vi­ron­ments at school and work. She said any pro­posed bill must be clear and en­force­able and strength­en the le­gal frame­work pro­tect­ing peo­ple both on­line and of­fline.

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mis­cha Lynch added emo­tion­al weight to the ar­gu­ment, in­sist­ing that free­dom of speech did not ex­tend to free abuse.

“We are not ban­ning jokes or si­lenc­ing pi­cong, Mr Speak­er. We are draw­ing a line be­tween hu­mour and ha­rass­ment, be­tween com­men­tary and cru­el­ty,” Lynch said.

Youth Gov­ern­ment speak­ers in­sist­ed new laws were un­nec­es­sary, ar­gu­ing that ex­ist­ing sys­tems al­ready pro­vid­ed pro­tec­tion. Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Zara Mod­ete dis­missed the Op­po­si­tion’s stance as sim­plis­tic.

She asked whether the Op­po­si­tion be­lieved leg­is­la­tion “came like an Ama­zon Prime pack­age, or­der­ing to­day and it fix­es so­ci­ety to­mor­row”. She warned against over-crim­i­nal­is­ing youths, not­ing that 60 per cent of cy­ber­bul­ly­ing of­fend­ers were un­der 25.

“We are sup­posed to be pro­tect­ing young peo­ple, not throw­ing them in jail cells and court­rooms be­cause this Par­lia­ment leg­is­lat­ed for fear rather than wis­dom,” Mod­este said.

She said the Gov­ern­ment had strength­ened en­force­ment tools and part­ner­ships, not­ing that TTPS Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Units han­dled more than 550 cy­ber­crime re­ports in 2023, while the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty record­ed a 36 per cent in­crease in harm­ful con­tent take­downs.

Health Min­is­ter Ahi­ra-Marie Atkin­son said the Gov­ern­ment was ad­dress­ing the men­tal health im­pacts of cy­ber­bul­ly­ing through coun­selling ser­vices at Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties and sup­port from NGOs.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Janak Meighoo said the mo­tion pro­mot­ed hur­ried so­lu­tions lack­ing prac­ti­cal ground­ing. He ar­gued that “en­act­ment with­out en­force­ment is not pro­tec­tion”, not­ing that the Com­put­er Mis­use Act was amend­ed in 2024 to im­prove safe­guards and that gov­ern­ment fund­ing had al­ready bol­stered cy­ber­crime re­sponse sys­tems.

Al­though the Youth Par­lia­ment show­cased well-re­searched ar­gu­ments on both sides, the sit­ting of­ten slipped in­to the ad­ver­sar­i­al, pi­cong-filled tone of the adult cham­ber. Speak­er Joshua Jit­ta of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies re­peat­ed­ly in­ter­vened as mem­bers in­voked var­i­ous stand­ing or­ders.

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath laud­ed the youth par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, telling them many of them had a tremen­dous fu­ture ahead in pol­i­tics. He said he was for­tu­nate to stand be­fore them as the young leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness, shar­ing that he was able to nav­i­gate it us­ing the in­sight and ex­pe­ri­ence of those who came be­fore him.