Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

The ar­rest and sub­se­quent charg­ing of YouTu­ber Christo­pher Hugh­es has con­tin­ued to stir con­cerns both at home and abroad.

Hugh­es, bet­ter known by his on­line moniker ‘Chris Must List,’ re­mained in cus­tody yes­ter­day, as his lo­cal at­tor­ney Criston J Williams filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for a writ of habeas cor­pus on his be­half.

Hugh­es was charged on Wednes­day with sedi­tion, aris­ing out of an in­ci­dent where he in­ter­viewed sev­er­al gang mem­bers dur­ing his vis­it to Trinidad.

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

The Sedi­tion Act states that “a sedi­tious in­ten­tion is to bring in­to ha­tred or con­tempt, or to ex­cite dis­af­fec­tion against gov­ern­ment, or the Con­sti­tu­tion, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives or the Sen­ate or the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice” (Sec­tion 3(1).

The ap­pli­ca­tion for a writ of habeas cor­pus usu­al­ly seeks to have a per­son’s de­ten­tion dealt with ex­pe­di­tious­ly, as the per­son may be re­leased if they suc­cess­ful­ly ar­gue their ar­rest is a vi­o­la­tion of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Williams for com­ment yes­ter­day but he de­clined.

“I have been asked in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to­day to re­main silent. So for now I have to re­main silent,” Williams said.

But an­oth­er at­tor­ney, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, de­scribed T&T’s Sedi­tion Act as “ar­cha­ic,” not­ing that such leg­is­la­tion had no place in a mod­ern, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.

Tak­lals­ingh rep­re­sent­ed for­mer head of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat­narayan Shar­ma, dur­ing a 2019 chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the Sedi­tion Act.

How­ev­er, in 2023, the Privy Coun­cil ruled the leg­is­la­tion was con­sis­tent with the Con­sti­tu­tion, over­turn­ing a rul­ing from High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad in 2020.

Tak­lals­ingh main­tained that the law was too vague and al­lowed for abuse if unchecked.

“It is too much of an in­fringe­ment on free­dom of speech and free­dom of ex­pres­sion. We can’t re­al­ly call our­selves a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety if we aren’t re­spect­ing peo­ple’s free­dom of speech and opin­ion,” he said.

“The Privy Coun­cil did say the sedi­tion of­fence re­quired that speech must in­cite vi­o­lence for some­thing to con­sti­tute the of­fence of sedi­tion. The fun­da­men­tal is­sue is that sedi­tion is too much of a re­stric­tion and Par­lia­ment has to look at it.”

Dur­ing a heat­ed ex­change with talk show host Fazeer Mo­hammed in 2020, then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi ar­gued that sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion still had a place in T&T, not­ing that it was the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), as an in­de­pen­dent, non-po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty, who would in­struct when the charge would be laid.

“Let me re­mind you, pri­or to our 1976 Con­sti­tu­tion, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice had a lot of the func­tions of the func­tions of the DPP.

“We took away that pow­er from the elect­ed mem­ber of a gov­ern­ment, a par­ti­san per­son, such as me who is elect­ed, I as an ex­am­ple would have been re­moved and am re­moved from that sit­u­a­tion,” Al-Rawi said then.

An au­dio record­ing of a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Hugh­es and his at­tor­ney sur­faced on so­cial me­dia on Fri­day, in which he de­scribed his ini­tial in­ter­ac­tion with po­lice.

Hugh­es said he re­ceived a phone call from a per­son who iden­ti­fied him­self as a po­lice­man who was seek­ing his as­sis­tance in pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Hugh­es’ ac­count, he re­fused the of­fi­cer’s re­quest to vis­it a po­lice sta­tion for ques­tion­ing, which led to a change in tone.

“He said, ‘Are you sure this is the way you want to go about it?’ Some­thing along those lines so I took that as a threat.

“So when the in­ter­view was done on TV, I went in and out of the (Cana­di­an) em­bassy in 15 min­utes and no one was there but they must have tapped Bra­vo’s phone be­cause by the time I was fin­ished with the em­bassy, un­der­cov­er po­lice were al­ready out­side.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via What­sApp, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah yes­ter­day said while el­e­ments of crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions and in­tel­li­gence could not be pub­licly di­vulged, the po­lice were re­spon­si­ble for ac­cu­rate­ly in­form­ing the pub­lic.

Heer­ah warned that the ab­sence of re­li­able in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing such high-pro­file ar­rests would stir spec­u­la­tion among the pub­lic and erode trust in the TTPS’ in­tegri­ty.

“Fail­ure to en­gage in these guardrails may re­sult in a loss of pub­lic trust and an in­crease in pub­lic scep­ti­cism to­wards the TTPS’ op­er­a­tions,” Heer­ah said.

“The TTPS must recog­nise the im­por­tance of strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tion and op­er­a­tional trans­paren­cy, es­pe­cial­ly in high-pro­file cas­es. By en­sur­ing com­pre­hen­sive me­dia brief­in­gs, em­ploy­ing tac­ti­cal­ly sound pro­ce­dures, cul­ti­vat­ing cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion sources, and man­ag­ing their im­age ef­fec­tive­ly, the TTPS can up­hold their du­ty while main­tain­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence and trust.”

Heer­ah said keep­ing the pub­lic re­li­ably in­formed was nec­es­sary, es­pe­cial­ly in cas­es which at­tract­ed in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

Mi­a­mi-based trav­el YouTu­ber David Hoff­man, bet­ter known as ‘Davids­been­here’, was one of sev­er­al YouTu­bers who of­fered sup­port for Hugh­es.

Hoff­man, who al­so vis­it­ed T&T, said trav­el vlog­gers in­formed the pub­lic by pro­vid­ing in­sight in­to is­sues.

“I’m just stand­ing up for some­body I feel doesn’t de­serve to be be­hind bars. I think he needs to go back to Cana­da and get out of Trinidad and I hope this can be re­solved as fast as pos­si­ble,” Hoff­man said.

“If this hap­pened to me, I hope some­body would stand up for me. As YouTu­bers trav­el­ling the world, where is the line be­tween free­dom of speech and what we’re do­ing to cre­ate art and give truth to peo­ple?”

No­table sedi­tion cas­es

In No­vem­ber 2005, dur­ing a ser­mon for Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions at the Ja­maat al-Mus­limeen’s Mu­cu­rapo com­pound, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr made state­ments over the Za­kaat (the Is­lam­ic sys­tem of col­lect­ing funds).

Bakr was charged with com­mu­ni­cat­ing a state­ment hav­ing sedi­tious in­ten­tion and two counts of in­cit­ing to de­mand men­aces with in­tent to steal and en­deav­our­ing to pro­voke a breach of peace.

The mat­ter end­ed with a hung ju­ry in 2012, but Bakr faced a re­tri­al in 2015 which was un­re­solved as he died in 2021.

In June 2016, then sec­re­tary of the TTPS So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) Michael Seales was charged with mak­ing a sedi­tious state­ment.

The state­ment was made one year ear­li­er in 2015, where Seales, dur­ing an in­ter­view, al­leged that there was a plot by the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment to frus­trate the po­lice ser­vice, which would lead to the in­tro­duc­tion of a state of emer­gency and in turn lead to a post­pone­ment of the gen­er­al elec­tions that year.

The charge was thrown out in Au­gust 2017 by then act­ing chief mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle, who up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion file by Seales’ at­tor­ney.

In No­vem­ber 2018, then pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Wat­son Duke was charged with sedi­tion over re­marks he made in re­sponse to pro­posed lay-offs.

Duke re­port­ed­ly said: “We must be pre­pared to die, folks. You know why? This is your be­lief, this is your fam­i­ly, and I am send­ing the mes­sage clear… let Row­ley them know that the day they come for us in WASA, we are pre­pared to die and the morgue would be pick­ing up peo­ple.”

The charge against Duke was dis­missed by Chief Jus­tice Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle.

Al­so in No­vem­ber 2018, Jonathan Mo­hammed was charged with sedi­tion and in­cit­ing acts of ter­ror­ism af­ter a se­ries of racial­ly-charged posts on Face­book.

Mo­hammed was ex­pect­ed to re­turn to court in March as the mat­ter was still on­go­ing.

In April 2019, then leader of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) Sat­narayan Ma­haraj made state­ments dur­ing his Ma­ha Sab­ha Strikes Back pro­gramme on TV Jaagri­ti, where he said peo­ple liv­ing in To­ba­go were lazy and the men were rapists.

Ma­haraj was nev­er charged but the re­marks prompt­ed po­lice to vis­it the SDMS stu­dios as part of in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ma­haraj lat­er chal­lenged the le­gal­i­ty of the sedi­tion law.