Cybercrime Bill outrage
…reminds APNU of election promise to preserve free speech
…Human rights body calls for scrapping of “repulsive” bill
The Working People’s Alliance (WPA), one of the coalition partners, has stepped into the consternation resulting from the inclusion of the sedition clause in the Cyber Crime Bill of 2016, demanding that it be removed due to the threat it poses.
According to the party on Friday, the offence in fact goes against the current Government’s promise at the May 2015 General and Regional Elections campaign: that it would respect constitutional provisions to protect freedom of expression.
“Further, we affirm that censorial power is in the people over the Government and not the Government over the people. In our view, political discontent is the cornerstone of democracy, and to tamper with it is a denial of individual human rights,” the WPA said on Friday.
Any law, it noted, which seeks to criminalise free speech or to appear to tamper with it in any form is a blow to the will of the people. “A sedition law has no place in a modern democratic society. It is a historical legacy of colonialism, and should have been abolished at the time of political independence”, the WPA has said.
According to the WPA, Guyana cannot truly call itself independent if the country still uses the “tools of the Crown” to silence or threaten dissidents. This, it noted, would be a betrayal of the anti-colonial, working class struggle.
At a post-Cabinet press conference last week, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, had insisted that the clause falls under national security.
However, according to the WPA, the clause is not only harmful, but wholly unnecessary. In view of previous cases, the party pointed to the Racial Hostility Act as one of the relevant pieces of legislation already in place to deal with threats originating from cyber space.
“We urge the Government to rescind the law of sedition, as it would signal that the state has no intention to resort to oppressive rule in the face of legitimate criticisms from the electorate, and note that there are adequate provisions in other acts, such as the Racial Hostility Act, to treat with the relevant cases that may arise.”
Scrapping
While the “sedition clause” itself has produced an uproar, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) on Friday noted that it is only one of the “many obnoxious features” of the bill.
The association noted that instead of protecting the principle and benefits of cyberspace users, the bill has dangerously been constructed with vague wording. It also conveys the impression, GHRA noted, of a cyberspace populated with dangerous people.
“…this Bill suppresses the right to freedom of expression, encourages censorship and self-censorship, eliminates content, blocks internet sites, prompting parallels with role of morality police associated with the most repressive regimes.”
It quoted section 3, clause (1) of the bill, which states, “A person commits an offence if the person intentionally, without authorisation or in excess of authorisation, or by infringing any security measure, accesses a computer system or any part of a computer system of another person.
It goes on to state that, “A person who commits an offence under subsection (1) is liable on summary conviction to a fine of three million dollars and to imprisonment for three years; or on conviction on indictment to a fine of five million dollars and to imprisonment for five years.”
“Cyberspace is not some form of disease that needs to be ‘cauterized’ lest it becomes rampant and destroy us all. On the contrary, it is both an expression and a reflection of today’s reality and that of the foreseeable future as well,” the GHRA added.
It noted that draconian legislation of the kind being proposed in the Bill would have little, if any, impact on this reality, adding that a more enlightened approach “is required — one which does not begin by seeking refuge in what will inevitably become a legislative quagmire in an already unstable criminal justice system,” The Association warned.
