In a press state­ment last week, the Grena­da gov­ern­ment said it "seeks to clar­i­fy mis­lead­ing com­ments from the Vi­en­na based In­ter­na­tion­al Press In­sti­tute (IPI) stat­ing that it has passed in­to law an Elec­tron­ic Crimes bill. The gov­ern­ment makes it clear, that it is false and in­ac­cu­rate to state that a bill has been turned in­to law when such a process has not oc­curred on this is­land."

The gov­ern­ment said it has pre­sent­ed a draft bill to the Bar As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers for re­view and the bill has been de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, but has not yet reached the Sen­ate for fur­ther de­bate.The draft bill was cir­cu­lat­ed to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers for re­view."Those com­ments have been tak­en on board and will be pre­sent­ed to the Up­per House of Par­lia­ment at the ap­pro­pri­ate time," the gov­ern­ment said.

How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment's ex­pla­na­tion con­cern­ing the leg­isla­tive process is seen by some ob­servers to be some­what disin­gen­u­ous giv­en the rul­ing par­ty's to­tal con­trol of all elect­ed seats and the cor­re­spond­ing un­like­li­hood of any mean­ing­ful de­bate in par­lia­ment it­self.In re­sponse to the bill, IPI said that, a year af­ter be­com­ing the first Caribbean coun­try to de­crim­i­nalise li­bel, Grena­da ap­peared to take a step in the op­po­site di­rec­tion by ap­prov­ing the sweep­ing cy­ber-crimes bill that in­cludes a pro­vi­sion for on­line defama­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Elec­tron­ic Crimes Act 2013, those found guilty of "send­ing of­fen­sive mes­sages through [elec­tron­ic] com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices, etc." face up to one year in prison and a fine of up to EC$100,000 (US$37,000/�28,000). In ad­di­tion to the un­de­fined "of­fen­sive" lan­guage, the law al­so cov­ers in­for­ma­tion known to be false that is in­tend­ed to cause, among oth­ers, "an­noy­ance, in­con­ve­nience, in­sult, or ill-will."

The law ap­pears in­tend­ed to ad­dress defama­tion not on­ly via so­cial me­dia, but al­so via user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent on news Web sites, usu­al­ly in "com­ment sec­tions." These sec­tions, which can be im­por­tant av­enues for av­er­age cit­i­zens to ex­press opin­ions, have be­come con­tro­ver­sial in the Caribbean and else­where as a fo­rum for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of po­ten­tial­ly li­bel­lous of even in­cite­ful ma­te­r­i­al.

Grena­da's min­is­ter for le­gal af­fairs, Elvin Nim­rod, ar­gued that the law was nec­es­sary "to pro­tect so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly those who are vul­ner­a­ble to mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy."

"IPI ab­solute­ly ap­pre­ci­ates that the ad­vent of so­cial me­dia and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of user-gen­er­at­ed com­ment have pre­sent­ed chal­lenges for pro­tect­ing the right to rep­u­ta­tion. But we are dis­ap­point­ed that the Grena­di­an gov­ern­ment has cho­sen to en­act a new crim­i­nal law as a re­sponse, es­pe­cial­ly since just last year the gov­ern­ment agreed with IPI that civ­il lit­i­ga­tion, not crim­i­nal ac­tion, is ap­pro­pri­ate for han­dling li­bel and defama­tion cas­es," IPI ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Al­i­son Bethel McKen­zie said.

She added: "Any ad­di­tion­al law aimed at reg­u­lat­ing this type of con­tent is not on­ly su­per­flu­ous but al­so threat­ens to lim­it press free­dom be­yond what is nec­es­sary in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety."

In a wide­ly crit­i­cised com­ment, Shere-Ann Noel, pres­i­dent of the Me­dia Work­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of Grena­da (MWAG), an af­fil­i­ate of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers, told IPI that she did not think the law would prove to be a "hin­drance to free­dom of ex­pres­sion" to jour­nal­ists on the is­land. But, she added, the law would af­fect "a cou­ple of peo­ple" who prac­tise anony­mous, mean-spir­it­ed post­ing that has be­dev­iled me­dia hous­es.

Fol­low­ing ap­proval of the bill by the low­er house of par­lia­ment, on­line blog­gers have weighed in ex­ten­sive­ly on the is­sue, with some threat­en­ing not to vis­it Grena­da if the bill pass­es in its draft form. Tourism is an im­por­tant com­po­nent of Grena­da's econ­o­my.

Mean­while, MWAG pres­i­dent Noel has been back­track­ing on the is­sue af­ter some of her col­leagues ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over her re­sponse to the pro­posed law, with one go­ing so­Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Mitchell, dur­ing his pre­vi­ous time as head of gov­ern­ment (1995-2008), was not­ed for hav­ing an un­easy re­la­tion­ship with the press. In 1999, George Worme, then ed­i­tor of Grena­da To­day, was ar­rest­ed and charged with crim­i­nal li­bel af­ter writ­ing an ed­i­to­r­i­al that ac­cused Mitchell of bribery.

At that time, the is­sue of free­dom of the press in Grena­da had be­come a mat­ter of great con­cern to the lo­cal me­dia and oth­ers and, in June 2004, the US-based Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists (CPJ) wrote a strong­ly-word­ed let­ter to then Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell, call­ing on him to "de­sist from any ef­forts to cur­tail the work of the press."

The let­ter said the CPJ was "alarmed by the Grena­di­an gov­ern­ment's re­cent at­tempts to in­tim­i­date the lo­cal me­dia, in­clud­ing le­gal ac­tions against the press for re­port­ing al­leged wrong­do­ing by you."The or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ferred to a crim­i­nal li­bel law­suit in Grena­da brought by Mitchell against Mi­a­mi-based fi­nan­cial newslet­ter Off­shore Alert and its pub­lish­er.

Al­so, in May 2004, Leroy Noel, a Grena­di­an free­lance re­porter, was held for ques­tion­ing about the con­tent of an ar­ti­cle that re­port­ed on con­nec­tions be­tween mem­bers of the rul­ing New Na­tion­al Par­ty and peo­ple ac­cused of cor­rup­tion.Four po­lice of­fi­cers de­tained Noel, who was a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to Caribbean Net News, while he was on his way to work at around 6.15 am. Au­thor­i­ties re­leased Noel four hours lat­er with­out charge.

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