As we've been reporting - government has tabled a revision to the Criminal Code, which will offer some protection to prosecutors, judicial officers, public officers, members of the media, teachers, elected officials and security-related personnel. The revision will upgrade the use of the charges for threatening words or behavior from a petty offence to a serious one and increase the penalty to up to five years imprisonment.
That sounds good, but the devil is in the details and the language of the legislation raised a number of red flags for this newsroom.
It seems to equate threatening words with insulting words - and those are two very different things. In a democracy, you're free to insult someone under freedom of expression - but to threaten their safety or wellbeing, that is another level.
We asked the Minister today whether the law as proposed muzzles freedom of expression - and he seemed ready to cede that point:
Kareem Musa, Area Rep, Caribbean Shores
"I don't believe so but whenever this matter does go to a committee level we will have the contribution hopefully from the press as well as we have seen recently in the news some of your colleagues have been subjected to being coughed on some have been punched some have been cursed out and so all these things are what were considered when drafting the legislation if it is they want to remove insulting words from it then perhaps that's something that can be considered but at the end of the day I think you have to look at it from a threatening standpoint if it does constitute a threat against any of those individuals then it would attract that particular charge."
We'll keep following the legislation as it goes to committee.
