Efforts to encourage Caribbean
journalists and others to observe the Day to End Impunity in 2011 were
spectacularly unsuccessful. This owes much to the fact that the word “impunity”
is not one that resonates very clearly in the public domain in this part of the
world.
This is not because freedom of expression and other freedoms
are not successfully curtailed without any recognisable consequence for
perpetrators, but that our authoritarian culture, derived from a repressive
colonial past and dysfunctional political culture, does not readily predispose
many of us to easy recognition of acts of impunity.
For example, when a newspaper editor is threatened and
defamed via a concerted email and online campaign in Trinidad ,
there aren’t high expectations that the person suspected of being behind it will
ever be brought to justice. It is written off as a joke.
Likewise, concerted efforts to smear the characters of two
female investigate journalists in the same country are dismissed as intolerance
by the media for the views of anyone but their own.
This year, the campaign to end impunity will focus on the
plight of Guyanese newspaper columnist, Freddie Kissoon, who has been
physically attacked on more than one occasion, including instances in which he
has been punched and had faeces thrown on him. There is hardly a body of public
opinion signally outraged that despite very good clues, no one has ever been
brought to justice for these crimes.
Recognising that freedom of expression does not only include
the write to express oneself, but the right of others to seek and access such
expression, an act of impunity can also said to have prevailed when the state
broadcaster in Guyana deprived persons from one part of that country from
accessing its radio and television signals because of contentious budget cuts
owing much to the interventions of the political representatives of that region
of the country.
Acts of impunity may also occur when labour laws, the right
to associate and the right to assemble are breached. For example, there was the
recent case of a senior journalist in Grenada who was dismissed by his
Barbadian publisher on highly-contestable grounds related to a story he refused
to retract and which was later found to accurate. The conditions of his
dismissal appeared clearly to conflict with existing industrial relations norms
and there is the view that a level of passive complicity has been displayed by
the government of Grenada
as a response to what some contend is an act of injustice.
Many in the international free expression community
sometimes also have to be convinced that someone need not be killed, kidnapped,
tortured or jailed in order to be silenced. Silence can come from the loss of a
newspaper job, the fear of public castigation or shame when the threat of
embarrassing personal information looms and the manipulation of otherwise valid
regulatory conditions related to the operations of broadcasters.
A culture of impunity can be said to be in existence,
according to the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) “when
those who seek to control the freedom of expression of others do so knowing
that it is unlikely they will be held accountable for their actions.”
The impact of such a culture of impunity can be recognised
in the Caribbean environment without searching
very far. Despite our claims of public candour and overflowing creative
expression, there are taboo issues many would not touch, many of which
challenge existing political orders.
IFEX warns us that all of this can lead to a world in which
people are afraid to speak out. Where criticism is stifled. Where the hard
questions don’t get asked. Where the powerful don’t get challenged. The result
is a world where free expression is silenced.
This is the scope and scale of the challenge for us in the Caribbean .
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