Shane Su­perville

At­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh has de­scribed this coun­try’s Sedi­tion Law as be­ing too broad and warns that it could be abused by the au­thor­i­ties to in­fringe on the rights of in­di­vid­u­als.  

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, Tak­lals­ingh who rep­re­sent­ed the for­mer head of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat­narayan Shar­ma, dur­ing a 2019 chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Sedi­tion Act, said the law had no place in a mod­ern, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.  

Ear­li­er this week it was re­port­ed that Cana­di­an vlog­ger Chris Hugh­es alias ‘Chris Must List,’ was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) and charged with sedi­tion.  

Dur­ing his vis­it Hugh­es in­ter­viewed sev­er­al pur­port­ed gang mem­bers in east Port of Spain and most re­cent­ly in Tu­na­puna where mem­bers of the Re­sis­tance Gang bran­dished weapons.  

The videos were up­loaded to Hugh­es’ YouTube ac­count but delet­ed short­ly af­ter.

A TTPS me­dia re­lease on Thurs­day con­firmed that Hugh­es was charged for al­leged­ly, “post­ing videos fea­tur­ing in­di­vid­u­als pro­fess­ing to be gang mem­bers, ad­vo­cat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and us­ing threat­en­ing lan­guage.”

Tak­lals­ingh said while he did not want to com­ment specif­i­cal­ly on Hugh’s, he main­tained that sedi­tion was too broad­ly de­fined.

“It is my view that Par­lia­ment needs to abol­ish the Sedi­tion Law or in any event those who are ad­vis­ing the au­thor­i­ty should con­sid­er what the Privy Coun­cil said in the re­cent Sedi­tion rul­ing which is es­sen­tial­ly to the ef­fect that it is on­ly speech that in­cites vi­o­lence that could form the ba­sis of a sedi­tion charge. “That’s all I can say.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp on Fri­day, po­lit­i­cal ad­vi­sor in the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion Jes­si­ca Birks con­firmed that they were aware of Hugh’s de­ten­tion and were in con­tact with lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to pro­vide “con­sular as­sis­tance.”