On Tues­day, De­cem­ber 7, 2021, at about nine in the morn­ing, I re­ceived one of the worst tele­phone calls of my life.

Less than 12 hours be­fore, I had swapped food sto­ries with an ex­iled Venezue­lan jour­nal­ist/com­mu­ni­ca­tion ex­pert and dis­cussed how this once-ac­com­plished pro­fes­sion­al could have moved away from clean­ing hous­es in Trinidad and op­er­at­ed at her full po­ten­tial in the Caribbean. She had big plans for her­self. There was a hint of hope. Or so I thought.

In 2019, she had par­tic­i­pat­ed in a re­gion­al, jour­nal­is­tic project un­der the ban­ner of the Caribbean In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism Net­work (CI­JN) ex­am­in­ing Venezuela’s Petro­Caribe ef­forts in the Caribbean.

Once the pan­dem­ic ar­rived, (and be­tween house­keep­ing as­sign­ments) she al­so worked on a Span­ish-lan­guage com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan to en­cour­age Venezue­lan na­tion­als in T&T to get test­ed for COVID-19.

Trag­i­cal­ly, even if she had sur­vived the dread­ful hours pri­or to that De­cem­ber 7 call, it would not have been the end of the is­sue ei­ther psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly or at law.

In fact, she would have faced the prospect of up to two years in prison for breach­ing the Of­fences Against the Per­son Act - leg­is­la­tion based on com­mon law prin­ci­ples that sought to en­cap­su­late long­stand­ing, colo­nial-era, moral, re­li­gious and oth­er so­cial or­der im­per­a­tives.

On Mon­day, I was jolt­ed back to De­cem­ber 2021 when I fol­lowed the pro­ceed­ings of a “Kick-Off” we­bi­nar host­ed by the Caribbean Re­gion­al Coali­tion for the De­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of Sui­cide.

The tes­ti­monies of pro­fes­sion­als en­gaged in this ef­fort, co-chaired by psy­chol­o­gist Dr Mar­garet Nakhid-Cha­toor of T&T and in­clud­ing Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts and ad­vo­cates, high­light­ed the anom­alous, anachro­nis­tic na­ture of an­ti-sui­cide laws.

All the while, I was there try­ing to un­der­stand: what could pos­si­bly be the ob­sta­cles to de­crim­i­nal­is­ing sui­cide/at­tempt­ed sui­cide? The cur­rent ef­fort by this coali­tion fo­cus­es on the coun­tries of Saint Lu­cia, Grena­da, The Ba­hamas, and T&T–all with so­phis­ti­cat­ed and en­light­ened le­gal pro­fes­sion­als oth­er­wise en­gaged in mod­ernising out­dat­ed laws.

In­deed, as a mere am­a­teur, I won­dered if a sui­cide at­tempt is suc­cess­ful, its un­law­ful na­ture be­comes moot. A corpse plays no role in a court­room, es­pe­cial­ly as an ac­cused crim­i­nal. And, if the ef­fort is un­suc­cess­ful, in what ways does im­pris­on­ment ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing fac­tors that led to such an at­tempt? This bor­ders on the ab­surd!

In 2022, the gov­ern­ment of Guyana struck the of­fence off its law books. When that hap­pened, I re­called the ef­forts of or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Guyana Press As­so­ci­a­tion (GPA) 12 years be­fore this, to im­prove me­dia cov­er­age of sui­cides in or­der that jour­nal­ists not con­tribute to ad­di­tion­al sui­cides and sui­cide at­tempts through un­pro­fes­sion­al me­dia cov­er­age.

I al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise in T&T around that same time, and I am aware that there have since been more.

Could it be, I won­dered, that such fo­cus on me­dia cov­er­age of the grow­ing in­ci­dence of sui­cide might just have con­tributed to sec­ond thoughts by the gov­ern­ment of Guyana on the mat­ter, even­tu­al­ly lead­ing to the re­peal such an out­dat­ed law?

Among the nu­mer­ous learn­ings from these ex­pe­ri­ences is the fact, as stat­ed by Dr Nakhid-Cha­toor on Mon­day, that sui­cide is a men­tal health is­sue and not a crim­i­nal act, even as the sup­posed de­ter­rent ef­fect of such a law is com­plete­ly un­proven. In fact, in Guyana, the law was “re­placed” by a Na­tion­al Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Plan.

The peo­ple who in­spired such laws in the colonies, the Eng­lish, them­selves re­pealed the of­fence in 1961 – even be­fore we be­came in­de­pen­dent in 1962. Now, as we know, we do not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low en­light­ened think­ing by the peo­ple who im­posed such laws in the first place.

We still have the death penal­ty (iron­i­cal­ly ad­ju­di­cat­ed up­on in the fi­nal in­stance by the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil) de­spite it be­ing fi­nal­ly abol­ished in the UK since 1998 - af­ter be­ing sus­pend­ed about 30 years be­fore that.

The death penal­ty is a much tougher knot to un­tan­gle here be­cause of the thirst for vengeance in the cur­rent sce­nario, but de­crim­i­nal­is­ing at­tempt­ed sui­cide and sui­cide it­self should in 2024 be a rou­tine, sim­ple, un­con­tentious act.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has a lot on his hands. But I am as­sum­ing there is noth­ing much to this, and that Op­po­si­tion sup­port should not be prob­lem­at­ic. It should be in all man­i­festoes.

Let it not be said in the fu­ture that we had friends and fam­i­ly who died as crim­i­nals, but that the re­sources of the so­ci­ety and the State were ex­pend­ed more mean­ing­ful­ly on ad­dress­ing this dis­turb­ing pub­lic health is­sue.

(Please note: The Na­tion­al Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Hot­line is 800-COPE and Life­line can be reached at 800-5588, 866-5433 and 220-3636).