PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Po­lice Ser­vice says racist or an­tag­o­nis­tic posts against spe­cif­ic groups can run you in­to trou­ble with the law, as it can be deemed as a sedi­tious act.

“A sedi­tious in­ten­tion is an in­ten­tion to raise dis­con­tent or dis­sat­is­fac­tion among the in­hab­i­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Jayson Forde said as he read from the Sedi­tion Act dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain.

“To en­gen­der or pro­mote feel­ings of ill will or hos­til­i­ty be­tween one or more sec­tors/sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty on the one hand and any oth­er sec­tion or sec­tions on the oth­er hand. Or feel­ings of ill will to­wards or hos­til­i­ty to­wards to or con­tempt for any class of in­hab­i­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go, dis­tin­guished by race, colour, re­li­gion, pro­fes­sion, call­ing or em­ploy­ment.”

Since the an­nounce­ment of Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­sults on Mon­day, a se­ries of so­cial me­dia posts have been crit­i­cised due to racial­ly-charged lan­guage, with sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions—in­clud­ing Ram­saran’s Dairy Prod­ucts, the T&T De­fence Force and T&T Fire Ser­vice—is­su­ing state­ments dis­tanc­ing and de­nounc­ing the com­ments made by per­sons iden­ti­fied as their em­ploy­ees.

“Many of these posts more than qual­i­fy, from what I have just read here, and once we find you and we have the ev­i­dence to sup­port it, you can be charged for ei­ther sedi­tion, you can be charged for ha­rass­ment,” Forde said.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith not­ed that some of the posts went be­yond the use of racial lan­guage but in­stead in­volved threats of vi­o­lence as well. This, he ex­plained, would not be ig­nored, even if it did not re­sult in charges.

“We have seen over the last few days, per­sons are ba­si­cal­ly mak­ing ac­cu­sa­tions to kill per­sons, peo­ple are ac­tu­al­ly boast­ing and telling the in­di­vid­ual he wished that he could rape the young la­dy.

“There are some sick hu­man be­ings out there and we are data­bas­ing all of these in­di­vid­u­als and even though they may not be com­mit­ting a crime, it is be­ing logged and be­ing mon­i­tored. They are go­ing to be weighed and mea­sured,” Grif­fith said.

“I un­der­stand that per­sons are very emo­tion­al, they may be hurt­ing, per­sons may be said, per­sons may be very hap­py, but you can­not use emo­tions as an ex­cuse to at­tack and in­fringe the rights of oth­ers.”

Grif­fith al­so de­fend­ed the use of the word “cock­roach­es,” which he him­self had used to de­scribe crim­i­nals pre­vi­ous­ly, af­ter a Ram­saran’s Dairy Prod­ucts em­ploy­ee and rel­a­tive of the fam­i­ly, Naila Ram­saran, used the same word in what was deemed a racist at­tack and suf­fered back­lash for it.

“As it per­tains to me men­tion­ing and re­fer­ring to cold-blood­ed killers, rapists, kid­nap­pers as a cock­roach, and per­sons who are of­fend­ed by this, I am tak­ing this op­por­tu­ni­ty to apol­o­gise. The fact of the mat­ter is that a cock­roach does not de­lib­er­ate­ly try to harm any­one, these in­di­vid­u­als do, so I apol­o­gise to cock­roach­es,” Grif­fith said.