Rickey Singh memory bridges the Americas

Less than a year following his death, pioneering Caribbean journalist Rickey Singh remained a powerful presence in hemispheric media circles on June 22, as leading journalists gathered on the margins of the 56th OAS General Assembly in Panama to discuss a new initiative bearing his name.

Initiated by outgoing Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Pedro Vaca, the “Rickey Singh Initiative for Journalistic Excellence in the Americas” was explored by hemispheric media leaders.

Special Rapporteur, Pedro Vaca

A “manifesto” prescribing “new ethics of communication” was presented by Mónica González, President of the Colombia-based Fundación Gabo, named for the late Nobel laureate, Colombian journalist/writer, Gabriel García Márquez.

 She stressed the importance of meeting the journalistic requirements of a new era of communication and introduced a journalistic “manifesto” and a discussion paper entitled: “Reinventing Ourselves - Key Pillars for Upholding Excellence in Journalism.”

 Barbadian attorney, human rights activist and former IACHR commissioner, Roberta Clarke, suggested that the initiative had the potential to address a “blind spot” in relations between the Latin American and Caribbean sub-regions.

 She said there had been recent efforts to “deepen the Commission’s understanding of the Caribbean and to encourage greater participation by Caribbean states and civil society.”

 “The IACHR was perceived as not doing the work to understand the Caribbean and the challenges and achievements in constructing democracies given the political and economic legacies of extreme violence and inequalities based on ethnicity,” Clarke added.

Attorney/human rights activist, Roberta Clarke

She said: “The Rickey Singh story is not only about journalism; it is about courage, the importance of information to democracy, the insistence on state accountability and a commitment to the Caribbean identity.”

 IACHR human rights consultant and daughter of the late Guyana-born journalist, Wendy Singh, described some of the challenges faced by her father, including exile from his home country and difficulties in both T&T and Barbados.

Caribbean participants at the Panama event included senior journalists from the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Human rights consultant and daughter, Wendy Singh 

Journalists and press freedom activists also came from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.

 The Initiative is due for formal introduction at the annual Gabo Festival currently underway in in Bogotá, Colombia.

 

 

The Charter we ignored

It is unfortunate that not many of us who have followed integration matters over the years have been reminding regional leaders and policymakers about the hollow PR that accompanied adoption of the Caricom Charter of Civil Society (CCS) almost 30 years ago.

In previous dispatches, I have - correctly or incorrectly at the technical level - described the statement of principles and values as our unratified but collective Caribbean “bill of rights.”

Yet, the enlightened intervention of 1997 remained largely neglected, referenced fleetingly in speeches, but seldom treated as a living instrument capable of shaping public policy or actively protecting citizens.

Had such disregard not been the case, we could well have settled numerous intra-regional and even domestic quarrels by reference to what can be summarised as a shared commitment to democracy, human rights, due process, transparency, participation, and social justice.

The recent Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) judgment in the Derek Ramsamooj case has the potential to finally change that.

Judges of the Caribbean Court of Justice

Essentially, T&T political scientist, Ramsamooj, asserted that the rights accorded to Caricom nationals under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) are not effective without the protection of fundamental human rights, specifically those rights articulated in the Charter.

True, the CCJ ruling does not magically transform the Charter into a legally binding treaty. Indeed, the judges expressly rejected that proposition. However, they also dispelled the notion that it is merely a symbolic declaration to gather dust on government shelves.

Instead, the Court found that the Charter serves as an important guide to interpreting Community law and identifying the general principles that underpin the Caricom project.

That distinction is enormously significant - at least for those of us who have advocated for the CCS to be recognisable as a basis for assertion of human rights at law.

I followed the situation with Ramsamooj from the start and did not feel overly confident that this aspect of his claim would have emerged as a decisive factor.

For years, regional governments displayed remarkable tardiness in advancing the Charter’s objectives. Successive Caricom Summits endorsed its principles, yet little effort was made to embed them systematically in regional governance.

The result has been an integration movement exclusively focused on markets, trade, and functional cooperation while paying insufficient attention to the human rights dimensions of development.

The Ramsamooj judgment revealed why this matters. Regional governments should sit up and take careful note. Those here in T&T who continue to proclaim the untruth that “we not in de CCJ” should also be particularly interested, as the matter was adjudged under the Court’s Original Jurisdiction to which all Member States are subject.

The judges relied on the CCS, together with national constitutions and international human rights instruments, to identify a region-wide baseline of rights and freedoms.

They recognised that RTC rights are meaningless if governments can at the same time restrict personal liberty, deny due process, or limit access to representation without adequate safeguards.

Ramsamooj was detained and had his passport confiscated by Surinamese authorities between 2020 and 2022. He was charged in 2020, five months into his detention, with a variety of offences including fraud and money laundering.

He had also been subjected to a Dutch-derived legal procedure known as “beperking”, or restriction, which gives authorities power to limit communication between a detainee and the outside world during an investigation.

In Ramsamooj’s case, this served to deny him direct access to legal counsel during critical stages of his detention and interrogation. He was also questioned in Dutch through a translator and signed documents in a language he did not understand.

The CCJ concluded that such application of the “beperking” procedure breached Community law. The judges found that freedom of movement and other treaty rights cannot be exercised effectively unless they are accompanied by minimum human rights protections.

Among these is the right of an accused person to have access to legal counsel of his or her choice. The judges noted that this right is entrenched in the constitutions of all Caricom member states and has effectively become a “regional customary standard.”

Based on this particular feature of the ruling, the Court awarded Ramsamooj US$30,000 in damages.

The Ramsamooj decision should signal that the era of human rights as secondary to economic integration may change. Caricom nationals who move, work, invest, and provide services across the region now have judicial confirmation that certain minimum standards should accompany those freedoms.

The CCS may still lack formal binding force, but the CCJ has made clear that its values matter.

OAS at the crossroads

Next week's 56th Regular Session of the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly convenes at a pivotal moment in hemispheric affairs, with several unfolding, interlocking developments bearing profound implications for regional relations and the Caribbean's place within all this.

These are not ordinary times. Here in our region, and perhaps everywhere else, a declining appetite for multilateral cooperation and action is accompanied by a reduction in the capacity to engage through both economic participation and enthusiastic political will.

It may well be that the latter persists as a by-product of cynical, hegemonic purpose and design and/or a growing inclination to singularly favour the transactional demands of domestic social and economic disequilibrium.

Within Caricom, there also appears to be a belief in the dispensability of a Caribbean paradigm that witnesses common cause and action. Even the colonial experience found value in geographical cohesion and joint endeavour.

Whatever the case, the hemispheric grouping founded on great hope in 1948 now faces a defining test of its relevance and effectiveness as a point of reliable resort at times when peace and security appear at stake.

For this reason, the outcomes of the June 22-24 General Assembly have the potential to be seminal in the framing of a renewed mandate and focus. There are several key issues, but those with profound, immediate impact include prevailing geopolitical tensions, sustainable financing of the organisation, and institutional reform.

The 55th General Assembly
hosted by Antigua and Barbuda (OAS Photo)

Secretary-General, Albert Ramdin, has already sounded the relevant alerts to reactivate an OAS that is “more agile, transparent, and results-oriented and better equipped to respond to Member States’ needs in a rapidly evolving geopolitical environment.”

It appears however that the requirements of such ambitions reside substantially in the will of member countries to decisively address some lingering, vexatious past and contemporary issues.

For example, and to invite the cat to pigeons’ quarters, the membership status of Cuba (now attracting aggressive, potentially violent attention from the US) should be regularised, and the situations regarding Venezuela and Nicaragua revisited.

Cuba’s membership, for example, is recognised for its non-participation in OAS processes since 1962. It never actually quit the movement. (Just, by the way and on another note, Cuba as far as I know has never expressed an active interest in full formal membership of Caricom.)

Nicaragua withdrew its membership in 2023, and Venezuela has been the subject of an on-and-off again relationship.

In 2017, then Foreign Minister (now Acting President) Delcy Rodríguez announced her country’s withdrawal. In 2019, through the Juan Guaidó fiasco, they were on again. Now, more recently, Rodríguez has asserted that Venezuela is no longer a member of the organisation. It’s complicated. Hopefully, this will be openly and honestly discussed in Panama.

Haiti meanwhile remains in the fold but is a major humanitarian concern and one for which there appears to be no readily available resolution.

The other major, but not entirely unrelated issue, is financing of the organisation’s 2027 budget. The United States typically accounts for close to 50% of such funds. Total expenditure in 2025 was US$165.2 million even as the USA “paused” its contributions for 90 days “pending review.” This followed an executive order to that effect.

For 2027, the Trump administration has, significantly, sought no funding for the country’s assessed contribution to the organisation. Several smaller contributors, such as T&T, are reportedly in arrears of their financial obligations.

There is also the corresponding imperative to ensure the OAS runs a much tighter ship. A May 2026 US Congressional Research Brief identifies the inter-connectedness of the key challenges of geopolitics, finance, and institutional capacity.

OAS Secretary General, Albert Ramdin
(OAS Photo)

“Since the early 2000s,” the brief says, “increased ideological polarisation among member states has made it more difficult to establish a common hemispheric agenda. In addition, member states have repeatedly assigned new responsibilities to the OAS without providing commensurate increases in funding.”

In the budget document prepared for next week's Assembly, Ramdin argues that discussion of the organisation's future “will require balancing ambition with fiscal responsibility, ensuring that political objectives are adequately aligned with operational capacity.

“We hope that we can unite around the principle that effective delivery requires investment, and without sufficient human and financial resources, mandates cannot be fulfilled. Making the OAS relevant again thus becomes unattainable.”

There must be acknowledgement of the fact, though, that there will not be another transformative 1948. The turbulent tides have come and gone and come again, in changed directions and intensities. This General Assembly might well prove to be a key make or break moment.

Emergency powers and public trust

As fate would have it, this column is being published the very day the government proposes to seek parliamentary approval for an extension of the current State of Emergency (SoE). This will apply for three months beyond its June 17 expiration.

A statement from the Office of the Attorney General last Sunday indicated that support for the decision derives in part from an impact assessment related to SoEs spanning the period December 2024 to May 2026.

This criss-crosses political administrations and, hopefully, the ensuing discussions will extend beyond the temptation to contrast and compare, with querulous, partisan points in mind.

Instead, it is to be hoped that an honest, thorough explanation of the manner in which such an intervention has been able, in the past and today, to satisfy all constitutional and good governance benchmarks and to meet valid objectives.

The AG, as a professor of law, would have more than once elaborated to his students the key pre-conditions set out under Sections 8-10 of the Constitution and all the important features that distinguish their extraordinary nature.

Section 8 contains the substantive grounds for declaring an SoE, while Sections 9 and 10 address duration and parliamentary oversight.

The public needs to understand the broad circumstances contemplated by the Constitution: war or imminent war; natural disaster, epidemic, or similar calamity; and serious threats to public safety or essential services – the latter being cited in this instance.

Recourse to an SoE generally unsettles people with a concern for the maintenance of human rights in all its facets, mainly but not solely through the stated rationale, and the framing and application of accompanying regulations. This is important since it focuses on the performance of official agencies entrusted with their enforcement.

Within that context, the role of state security agencies is deemed singularly important – the police service and military in particular.

The citizenry is fully entitled to closely scrutinise this feature of SoE implementation. And the issues to which people and their representative civic institutions should pay the greatest attention.

Sometimes it is difficult to maintain clear focus through the haze of partisanship and political sycophancy. But responsible broader community intervention should routinely occur to bring under sharp scrutiny some key attributes of police and other official behaviour.

As discussed in last week’s edition of this column, public trust is indispensable when it comes to state actions that impinge on civil liberties and require us to concede otherwise protected space.

It starts with pervasive confidence in the soundness of a decision to travel such a path. I cannot say this is either universal or completely immune from irrationality in either support or opposition. Whatever prevailing predispositions, there is a case to be respectfully and competently made.

There are several key actors in the management of public emergencies, and the executive is only one of them. Let’s focus on another principal player, the Police.

The Police of Trinidad and Tobago at work

I have not heard any arguments against the view that a comprehensive remodelling of the police service, as currently constituted, is absolutely required to bring it in line with modern realities and challenges, and consequently to render this agency of the state wholly trustworthy under an SoE.

The slothful path being taken to recognise the value of body cameras is a simple example. The prohibitive default posture when it comes to public dissent is another.

But there are wider, already acknowledged shortfalls on questions of criminal detection rates and, even further, eventual conviction within the framework of our criminal justice system.

As it is – and to cite just one issue - there is a more likely chance than not of a criminal getting away with murder. This is even when there are more sharply focused laws, harsher penalties, and even emergency powers to skip some elements of legal processes.

The experience of the latest round of SoE conditions appears to reinforce the point. Impunity remains the norm however rigid, even fatal, the application of regulations.

There is also a need for greater transparency and accountability by the TTPS, and the equipping and positioning of the Police Complaints Authority and other agencies to ensure this is achieved when things appear to go wrong.

Persistent concerns remain regarding corruption, poor professional standards, and the need to strengthen police-community relations.

None of these is irrelevant to how emergency powers are administered and accepted by law-abiding citizens.

Hopefully, some guidance will be provided in the House of Representatives today. It’s the least we should all expect.

 

A Crisis of Trust

It is clear to me that a lingering belief in some great and multi-faceted injustice resident among us is not solely the stuff of contemporary partisan deliberation.

If we dare pay closer attention, we will recognise some familiar elements of fear, distrust, and a lack of confidence in key institutions, and in what the resulting future is likely to bring.

Distrust in institutions is deep-rooted, culturally expressive, and increasingly articulated by younger generations and creatives.

This did not arise yesterday morning upon the incomprehensibly oppressive behaviour of officialdom and is expressed as disapproval over the status quo resulting in dissent and resistance.

The steelpan developed this way. Ban the drums (the Peace Preservation Act, 1884) and tamboo bamboo followed. Ban the tamboo bamboo (Summary Offences Ordinance, 1934) and along came pan – a singular, unique force for indigenous innovation and change whose place will not be denied.

In my view, creative defiance is imperilled mainly by societal retreat or surrender. Listen to our young people though and you will see that, even as dissent is being expressed in new and different ways, that isn’t going to happen any time soon – with or without the involvement of traditional players such as labour unions, human rights activists, and politicians.

Should our youth retreat or surrender, an already brittle civic substructure can and will collapse. Already, they are not turning up at the polls as a symbol of disapproval - whatever their deployment to fill space at the rallies and public exhibitions.

This situation, in my view, represents evidence of a genuine state of public alarm – over and above shady circumstances designed to barely and opaquely meet constitutional benchmarks for an “emergency.”

My participation in two recent activities reinforced these views. Last week at the Caribbean Media Summit hosted as a hybrid event from Port of Spain, a common thread related to retreating “trust” in media and official institutions would not go away.

Marching for Press Freedom - Trinidad Nov 20, 1998

The declining credibility of legacy media – both conspiratorially extracted and not - was repeatedly cited as being among the major challenges to their continued viability.

Apart from a decided failure to adapt, this phenomenon results from the unprecedented challenges of the new social media space, mis and disinformation (read “propaganda”), targeted undermining, and malpractice occasioned by the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.

The trust factor was however not generally considered to be the concern of only mass media but also of official institutions.

There are studies in other parts of the world that establish relatively inelastic relations between trust in media and trust in institutions of the state (and vice versa). But that’s for another occasion, perhaps when our universities start doing some of the important work.

It has been suggested that both an inclination and capacity to defend truth, accountability, and democratic values are prerequisites to both strong media and credible governance. In their absence, a crisis unfolds.

Recent events in T&T and elsewhere in our region prove these points. If, in fact, there is a belief that some great darkness is descending on our nations - and I believe that to be the case in T&T - it is clearly not the time to either ignore the causative factors or to impose regimes of restriction and oppression to limit expression of such apprehensions.

These are not entirely my own thoughts. The second important event I attended last week was the Bars Spoken Word show at the ThinkArtWork Studio in Port of Spain.

The young performers there provided a most articulate expression of distrust, fear, and looming despair you would otherwise have been detecting in the public views of creatives in other fields.

Those who have not been looking are amazed at the continuing explosion of creative expression in all its forms – art, music, drama, dance, literature. People attracted to such things are spoiled for choice but are also increasingly being exposed to the seeds of aspiration and change.

Leading the 1998 March

Hope? Yes, there is. There has to be – free expression in itself bearing that particular message. Whether it can be whipped into submission is another story. I suspect it won’t.

I will speak more about the Bars event on another page of this newspaper. But we ignore the messaging of our youth and our creatives at our peril. They are not displaying a preference for tribal or partisan allegiance. They are speaking truth in new and different ways.

Expression relaying a crisis of trust will not be silenced.

Caribbean media risks

It is no secret that traditional mass media face numerous, potentially terminal perils today.

Media establishments everywhere, including in the Caribbean, are being forced to consider changes to secure their survival. Mergers, consolidations, capture, re-calibration, staff cutbacks, and closures now scar our media landscape.

The Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC), of which I am a part, has been researching prospects for continued media viability in the region and is not coming across very encouraging news.

In fact, tomorrow and Friday, the MIC will host a hybrid ‘Caribbean Media Summit’ from its T&T base to discuss these identical issues with perspectives from experts in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the wider Caribbean.

It is hoped that current regional media leadership, and other influential players in academia and public policy can listen, learn, and act on rational observations and conclusions.

UNESCO notes that as many as 10% of the world's media enterprises have closed in recent years, for reasons including commercial non‑viability.

It is clear that such fragility resides alongside longstanding threats of regulatory pressures, open hostility and violence, and the more recent threat of far-reaching disinformation campaigns in mortal combat against legitimate news sources.

Witness the social media deluge. Who is being “influenced” by whom? How? And to what ends? There are big issues associated with what is at play and what is at stake.

I am no advocate for regulation. This tends to be self-serving and myopic. But I am for greater official attention to management of an untrammelled marketplace. Some countries are pursuing different actions when it comes to the “big-tech” players, for instance. Media capture by powerful commercial/political interests are also evident.

Changed socio‑economic conditions, fast‑evolving technologies, market dominance by big‑tech multinationals, and generative artificial intelligence are all being examined as major generators of stress on legacy media.

Also, importantly, there have always been people and organisations who prefer these professional establishments not exist in the first place.

Journalists are easy targets of public hate and hostility, and media houses face vicious, unwarranted attacks when they publish narratives some find objectionable, or not in keeping with their individual convictions or belief systems.

Trinidad Express Newsroom 1986

Suddenly, as well - depending on commercial and/or political standing - media “freedoms” are considered to be disproportionately provisional upon delivery of broad social “responsibilities.”

Politicians in power become far more efficient proponents of the responsibility dictum than when they first aspired to office.

In thin Caribbean economies, state advertising is consequently deployed to reward the compliant and withdrawn as punishment for nonconformity. Paid and unpaid social media operatives diligently engage campaigns to undermine and discredit the earnest work of journalists.

The media do not stand alone. It’s the same when it comes to awareness of human rights. Perspectives on rights shift easily in accordance with power status.

Overnight, there is this transformation which suggests little understanding and support in the first place.

I have witnessed more changes in heart over the death penalty, for instance, than current adjustments in the weather outlook by meteorologists - the turning points mainly being adjacency to political power.

Today, Caribbean media face all of these idiosyncrasies and more – most of them internal in nature and related to adaptation consequent upon socio-cultural, technological, economic, and political tides of change.

Through all this, it appears clear that traditional structures and modi operandi cannot and will not withstand this convergence of longstanding adversities and contemporary challenges.

Media closures in the Caribbean, including Newsday in T&T, Stabroek News in Guyana, and a number of smaller operations throughout the island chain and mainland territories of Caricom, prove the point.

To me, the main loss from all of this is the reduction in professional journalism. Media closures are not only leading to fewer media enterprises that produce a wide variety of content, but shrinkage in the number of people who practise the profession.

In the process, a desire for greater diversity grows but is managed by a putative open market skewed by platform preference, manipulative algorithm, and factors that are generally blind to human judgment.

At the same time, claims for audience attention are being leveraged by very influential actors who are legitimate in their own right, but not in all instances committed to journalistic values.

We are not sure what the future holds. But it is most likely not to closely resemble what obtained in years past. For better or for worse.

Lessons from Angelo and Angelica

Tobago is not the kind of place most people regularly associate with heartbreak. Yet recent encounters with tragedy and grief have provided reason to reconsider how we proceed nationally on matters of personal responsibility, public policy, and collective action.

As of the time of submission of this column, the search for missing baby Angelo remained in progress - a month after little Angelica was killed while wading in the ocean with her parents at Pigeon Point.

The case of Angelo’s disappearance will soon receive judicial attention, and numerous questions will need answering. More soon.

Angelica, we would recall, died when a jetski slammed into her as she waded in the ocean at Pigeon Point in Tobago last month.

Today’s primary focus is on her, which raises issues that demand more than our customary awkward attention. We have been shabbily negotiating a notion of “the right to earn an honest dollar” against legal requirements, and a duty of care in the absence of explicit or ignored regulation.

If we wished we could compile a long list including things such as street vending, traffic light windshield wipers, itinerant food stalls, and an entire informal economy – productive but known for non-compliance with labour and other laws.

You may have however gathered from previous dispatches that I believe the highest form of responsible human conduct can come from actions unaccompanied by regulation. As a society, we need to understand how far we should go.

We have sufficient evidence that more laws and harsher punishment do not necessarily produce better, more principled behaviour.

Then we have instances where impunity appears to be the norm. There is a law or a rule, but the chance of getting away with breaching it is so high that people are not inclined to comply.

We live in a country, for example, where there is a higher probability of getting away with a violent crime than of being caught - an average detection rate of under 30%. And if caught, the chance of competent prosecution and prompt sanction is even lower.

Now imagine the fun to be had in command of a jet ski when the abuse of such an activity is viewed as low-level wrongdoing. Put this together - the “honest dollar”, high impunity, “having fun”, and scant official attention - and you land at the spot where Angelica was killed.

GML Business Correspondent Andrea Perez-Sobers kept the issue alive when she interviewed Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett on the subject at last week’s Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Antigua. Full marks for journalistic persistence on this point.

Tobago - not regularly associated with heartbreak

Endorsement of an offer by Jamaica to help guide an orderly transition from pre-Angelica mayhem has promptly come from domestic tourism actors.

I hope all concerned will pay close attention to what this regional tourism leader has in place for itself to stem the possibility of death, injury, and harm resulting from the misbehaviour of people who own or control what regulations there categorise as “personal watercraft (PWCs).”

For starters, in Jamaica, all PWCs must be registered and licensed. They are also not allowed to be operated from public beaches.

Bear in mind, though, that the concept of a “public beach” is currently the subject of strenuous debate in Jamaica given appalling restrictions on beach access by non-state actors, particularly in the tourism industry.

PWCs are also generally required to operate only in daylight, and under licenses that distinguish private, commercial, and security usage.

In The Bahamas - another serious tourism destination … which T&T is not … regulations are even more extensive: import controls, registration, insurance, regular police vetting, and zoning.

None of these measures equals a ban on PWCs.

In T&T we are moving belatedly toward enforcement of a maritime/small craft policy. Though the focus is understandably on Tobago for now, there are ocean folk in Trinidad who can recite a long list of other transgressions by recreational and other boaters.

We appear to be at a point where a duty of care cannot be reliably and voluntarily expected at all times. Personal responsibility is not always a popular resort. So, Angelica’s case is not only for the Tobago House of Assembly to mull. We are all called to account on this one. Two little angels are among those who brought us here.