PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Two men who have faced sedi­tion cas­es in the past have had some­what dif­fer­ing views con­cern­ing Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad's judge­ment on Mon­day.

On Mon­day, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad up­held the late for­mer sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sat Ma­haraj's con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge of the sedi­tion act and ruled that claus­es in the sedi­tion act were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, who had been charged un­der the act in 2005, but saw his case was list­ed for re­tri­al af­ter a ju­ry could not de­cide up­on a ver­dict on the mat­ter in 2012, was pleased with the rul­ing.

"Ex­cerpts from Jus­tice Seep­er­sad's judg­ment were a breath of fresh air. When prin­ci­ples of jus­tice are ap­plied by the courts I am al­ways vin­di­cat­ed. In this in­stance, it was in­di­rect but still ap­pre­ci­at­ed," said Abu Bakr in re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

"In my sedi­tion mat­ter I quot­ed the Quran and its teach­ings. I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to warn my con­gre­ga­tion against the Greed that is de­stroy­ing our Na­tion and I was charged for do­ing just that. In the spir­it of my mes­sage then which saw me dragged be­fore the Courts," he said in ref­er­ence to his case.

The Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen leader, how­ev­er, did not agree with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi's stance in re­sponse to the rul­ing, as in his view the law was out­dat­ed.

"In no way do I ad­vo­cate for ir­re­spon­si­ble, di­vi­sive, hate­ful, speech. I can dis­tin­guish my­self from oth­ers in that light. How­ev­er, still, free­dom of speech is es­sen­tial in any so­ci­ety. I am sur­prised that the AG is still at­tempt­ing to de­fend this ar­cha­ic un­just law," he said

In­spec­tor Michael Seales, who was charged un­der the act in 2016 in re­la­tion to state­ment he made on a live TV broad­cast in 2015, said he is not sur­prised by the rul­ing giv­en by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Mon­day.

"I was not sur­prised, I think that when you look at what he analysed in terms of what the law speaks about, which is very im­por­tant for me. That grey area that we do not have a thresh­old for, what can be de­ter­mined to be a sedi­tious state­ment so that wasn't too sur­pris­ing to me," said Seales

The case against the for­mer Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (PSWA) Pres­i­dent was dropped a year lat­er.

De­spite that ex­pe­ri­ence, Seales said he shared some of the con­cerns raised by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al con­cern­ing the rul­ing that it would re­strict the abil­i­ty to curb hate­ful or in­cite­ful speech.

"Yes, I do share his view, but what we have to un­der­stand is that whilst we on­ly have the law of sedi­tion in the land. The ques­tion of hate speech and these oth­er is­sues that fol­lows from oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions will be­come im­por­tant for us," said Seales, "We must have some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in terms of what you say be­cause, in fact, even some­thing as sim­ple as a threat in terms of an as­sault is in fact law. But what you have done now when you dis­ag­gre­gate this way, what you do is cause a po­ten­tial prob­lem in the fu­ture for all oth­er laws that sur­round the ques­tion of speech."

How­ev­er, Seales agreed with Seep­er­sad that a spec­i­fi­ca­tion con­cern­ing what con­sti­tutes hate­ful or in­cite­ful speech should be made.

"If you don't speak about thresh­old you must de­clare what type of speech would amount to a crim­i­nal act and I do agree with that," said In­spec­tor Seales.

Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke, who was charged un­der the act last year, said he was con­sult­ing his lawyers con­cern­ing the rul­ing yes­ter­day and would speak more on the is­sue in a press con­fer­ence to­day.