My last column was titled “The fight against sedition” and although this week’s column relates to the same topic, the title has changed somewhat, based on the perspective I wanted to speak about.
I have come to realise that I am now aged and bowed down with the burden of three-quarter of a century of wars, toils, and labours. To the nation’s youth, I am probably presented as a man of the past, indicative of a generation already passed away. My ideals have lost their charm (if at all they had any). Though futile, possessed of limited energy and living on only in a wearied and decrepit old age phantom-like way, my shoulders still remain unbowed.
I am able to flex my shoulders with huffs and puffs of fresh air only to channel such energy through my upper passageway converting the same into free speech. Throughout the years, this freedom of speech has not been utilised as an aggressor. Rather it has been invoked whenever I witnessed discrimination and oppression taking place and to speak out, to ‘strike back’ against those who have been wanting in ideals. I have now been summoned by my dharma (Hindu code of conduct, a higher calling) to once again fight for my people, my fellow citizens.
The Sedition Act continues to remain in our Statute Books which in my humble view is a source of human demoralisation. It represents the petty privileges which our yester-centuries’ colonial masters threw to us as morsels. Whilst attempting to sow the seeds of constitutional rights (post-independence) such as the right of public meeting and freedom of the press, the Sedition Act only serves to demoralise us by cheating us into the belief that we are free.
How can our “freedom of association and assembly” and “freedom of the press” truly be realised if we have no freedom of expression? As a matter of fact, the Sedition Laws of T&T will waste away our individual and collective intellect. In a modern society, it is the freedom of speech and freedom of the media that educates the citizenry.
Which would you consider to be worse? Living in an extreme communist state where you know there is no freedom of speech and writing against an administration was at your own peril? Or the pretence of freedom of speech fostered in an ignoble mixture of servility and licence. Of silent crying which is temperament of slavery? I would prefer death or jail than embrace slavery!
This is why I decided to take up the mantle of challenging the constitutionality of certain provisions of the Sedition Act. Though I had pondered taking legal action before, it was during Indian Arrival Day celebrations this year that I realised that the people of our country would never be free and safe from persecution and prosecution once such a law remained in existence. I immediately communicated with my attorneys at law and the very next day my constitutional challenge was filed in the High Court of Justice.
The Honourable Prime Minister’s flip-flopping stance on the issue of repealing the Sedition Act really takes a swipe at the lowest levels of human intelligence. I cannot describe his superficial analysis of the issue as imbecilic for that would probably be considered seditious. What I would say though, is that no one has asked for the laws to be repealed/reviewed simply because they are archaic. There is a context Mr Prime Minister.
Stop the unsavoury remarks such as “we should amend the murder laws too cuz they old.” Why then, did your Government move to amend the two-decades-old Freedom of Information Act, claiming that enough time had passed and there was sufficient time for review. It would do well to take time out and consider the issue. Where is your Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi? Where is your ‘Gary Sobers,’ Minister of Everything Stuart Young? They should have been discussing and advising you.
In 2012, the polling company Rasmussen Reports released the results of a (United States of America) survey in which participants answered questions about the importance of certain constitutional rights. Freedom of speech led the poll with 85 per cent of participants, classifying the right as “Very Important.” Judging from recent media coverage, I dare say that our local people-meter polls point to a similar finding.
I have generalised this discussion since my legal challenge is presently before the High Court. The writing is already on the wall. No first-world modern society has allowed sedition laws to remain as part of their laws. The fundamental question is whether T&T believes in freedom of expression or not. If not, are we subjecting ourselves to the whims and fancies of governments and or state agencies in employing the Sedition Act conveniently against critics?
In the course of another fifty years, society will look back to these times in the same spirit that the nineteenth century looked back to the Middle Ages as a period of absolute ignorance and darkness. I will reside peacefully with my Maker in the contentment that I had fought for freedom until the bitter end!