Free Expression in Latin America and the Caribbean

A very important alignment of Latin American and Caribbean free expression voices has begun to unfold under the banner of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) which brings together organisations from all over the world committed to free speech, a free press and general freedom of expression.

It can be said that representative organisations of Latin America and the Caribbean have for long remained estranged cousins with little inclination to join hands in pursuit of goals such as the maintenance of human rights and our freedoms. The ambivalence has been exacerbated by the presence of states such as Cuba and Venezuela that have openly expressed and applied sanctions against free expression.

Mixed feelings on this aspect of the discussion occur because there have always been relatively close relations between these two countries and the English-speaking Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica were among the first countries of the world to officially recognise Cuba as a legitimate state run by a government which has as its supreme ambition the betterment of its people. Cuba has also been a generous benefactor in the form of educational scholarships and the ready availability of health care professionals in situations where other countries of the region have fallen dramatically short.

But, this does not reduce Cuba’s responsibility to honour commitment to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which specifically defines the parameters of this important freedom. People cannot and should not be imprisoned or harassed for expressing their views on matters of public affairs.

Persons on the so-called “left” of Caribbean public affairs are committing a grave error in not unequivocally condemning such an approach by Cuban officials, even as we all recognise the country’s contribution in the areas I have described.

Good feelings about programmes of direct and indirect financial aid from Venezuela to Caribbean countries under severe financial strain need also to be balanced against the designs of the authoritarian leader in Caracas. Too many in the Caribbean are prepared to provide blind cheerleader support for an anti-Americanism that has as its basis circumstances that have little to do with us.

For reasons such as these, Caribbean people need to spend more time attempting to understand what makes the countries of Latin America tick while we engage a similar exercise to come to terms with neighbours about whom we understand too little.

The participation of the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) at the Annual Meeting of the IFEX Latin American and Caribbean Alliance in Lima, Peru on March 23-25, 2010 was one attempt to achieve the latter objective.

The ACM’s contribution to the meeting focused on defining New and Emerging Challenges to Freedom of Expression and Improving Collaboration on Free Expression Issues between Latin American and Caribbean groups.

The Association also contributed to and endorsed a conference statement which defined ten key challenges to freedom of expression in Latin America and the Caribbean. These included:

1. Illegitimate mechanisms of governmental control over the media that allow undue political interference. Political control is exercised via the discretionary granting of licenses or the regulation of broadcasting; through abuse in the distribution of State advertising to influence editorial lines; through the ownership or significant control of the media by political leaders or parties; as well as through procedures against independent media based on political motivations, including the defense of obsolete regulations - such as sedition laws or the requirement of "truthfulness" in the news – such policies are destined to criminalise the criticism of governments and public officials.

2. Criminal laws against defamation, such as contempt of court laws or those that criminalise libel and slander are often used to restrict freedom of expression. The abuse of such laws and the existence of excessively severe sanctions, such as imprisonment or suspended sentences, result in the loss of civil rights.

3. Violence against journalists remains a very serious threat to the freedom of expression; particularly against those journalists who cover social problems, including organised crime or drug trafficking; who criticise the authorities or others in positions of power; who cover violations of human rights or corruption; or who work in conflict zones. An increasing number of violent attacks on journalists remain unpunished and not enough resources are allocated to prevent them or to investigate them and seek justice when they do take place. This phenomenon often leads to journalists' self-censorship and therefore diminishes citizen access to information on matters of public interest.

4. Limits to the right to access information, despite having been widely acknowledged as a basic human right. Most of the region's States have not approved legislation to ensure full compliance.

5. Discrimination in the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, against historically disadvantaged groups (women, indigenous people, among other vulnerable groups and other minorities) who are still struggling for their views to be taken into account and to be able to access information that is relevant to them. Among the principal violations are obstacles to the creation of media outlets for these populations, and the minimal representation of their members in the newsrooms of the major media, including public outlets.

6. Economic pressures that threaten the media's capacity to cover matters of public interest, due to the increasing concentration of media ownership, with serious consequences for the diversity of sources and content. The strains on the advertising market and other commercial pressures have led the media to take cost-cutting measures that are detrimental to the coverage of local issues and to investigative journalism, and instead promote low-level intellectual entertainment. These factors increase the risk of only existing media outlets reaping the benefits of the transition to digital frequencies, thus preventing greater diversity and access to public interest media.

7. Lack of support for public and community-based stations, which can play an important social role, face increasingly frequent obstacles to public financing access and suffer the lack of specific legal recognition with appropriate criteria in fair and democratic conditions that guarantee their development and prevent discriminatory measures based on technical or sustainability based issues.

8. Using national security as a guise to restrict the freedom of expression, which has historically been used to impose unjustified restrictions on freedom of expression through overly broad definitions of what constitutes "apology" or "promotion" of terrorism or violence.

9. Governmental control of Internet use, to control or limit this outlet of free speech through the blocking of websites. Also, certain corporations that provide search, access, messaging and publishing services, among others, do not make enough efforts to respect the privacy rights of users to access the Internet without interference.

10. Restricted access to new information and communication technologies. Although most of the population still has limited or no access to the Internet, States in the region continue to maintain pricing structures that prevent the use of the Internet by the least privileged sectors and fail to extend connectivity to all their countries' territories, leaving rural users, in particular, with less information and diminished spaces for free expression.

The Caribbean context on the question of free expression was framed by a presentation on defining the Caribbean and exploring its socio-political antecedents. It was expressed that in the English-speaking Caribbean, defined as those countries that are member states of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), threats to free expression are often not readily evident, did not always include violence or the threat of violence, but are very much a feature of modern life in the region.

It was explained that, unlike many areas of Latin America, there is a long tradition of democracy and Caribbean societies are known to be open, with a free press that pre-dates the region’s achievement of political independence, beginning with some states in the 1960s.

State monopolies in the Caribbean broadcast sector started coming to an end in the 1980s but, in 2010, not all countries are currently at the same level. However, by and large, the state no longer dominates broadcast media in most countries.

In the Caricom countries there remains direct censorship in the form of official censorship of movies and some broadcasting content – mainly on grounds of decency, security and protection of the public interest. There was also censorship that came in the form of judicial edicts and the rulings of presiding officers in parliament. There also existed widespread self-censorship often influenced by commercial and political factors.

The ACM pointed out that criminal defamation and criminal speech are on the books of all English-speaking Caribbean countries and there have been recent examples of the use of these provisions in countries such as Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda. Civil defamation awards are often heavy and in Grenada, recently, one newspaper was forced to close its doors under the burden of a defamation award.

The challenges to free expression have come via the chilling effect not only of the presence of strong defamation laws, but the presence of social attitudes toward what constitutes “decency” and issues of good taste. There is also a sense that free expression should not harm children, offend religious practices or promote social discord.

In Jamaica, for example, the Broadcasting Commission has a no-play list of music. In Trinidad and Tobago, the Board of Film Censors has more than once banned movies and on more than one occasion, the police have stormed theatre stages for the use of obscene language. In many countries, broadcasters will not play music that appears to offend the ruling party.

State advertising and government fiscal prerogatives have been used in some countries to punish errant media, performers and other social groups.

Importantly, the ACM indicated, a vulnerability to natural disasters has led to temporary and permanent media closures and has created a level of vulnerability since state support can be selectively applied post-disaster.

The ACM also pointed to the fact that disparities in access to online media/mobile technologies continue to exist in some states. This meant that the freedom to seek and access expression was often not honoured. The Association also pointed to instances in which state officials have expressed a desire to impose restrictions on internet content and had, in at least one instance, been cited as a measure possible under telecommunications regulation.

Were we there, or did we arrive?

One headline in the February 9, 2010 edition of the Cuban newspaper, Granma, caught my attention as I continued to look at the situation in Haiti and the challenge it poses to the Caribbean Community; both as a formal institution for the achievement of integration and as a community of people living in the same space who believe they ought to share a common future.

Granma headlines a story on Cuban assistance to Haiti in the wake of the January 12 earthquake with: “Cuba is not arriving, Cuba is already here.”

It is a fitting slogan in the context not only of Cuba’s longstanding philanthropic diplomacy in the Caribbean, but as a starting point in considering the Caricom “response” to the post-earthquake crisis.

The USA, for certain, was already there, so were Canada and France and the United Nations. China and Spain and others also found themselves there long before arrangements for a Caricom photo-op were being considered – an opportunity scuttled by ineptitude.

But, what is the truth? Were we (Caricom) already there, or did we have to “arrive”?

In a sense, Caricom has long been in Haiti and Haiti has long been in Caricom. I am not talking about the country’s formal accession to Caricom in 2002 following provisional membership in 1998, but about the things that have joined Haiti to Jamaica, Cuba, The Bahamas, Turks and Caicos and other neighbours over many generations.

But, the question stands: Was Caricom, the institution, there for Haiti on January 12? And this does not mean the office occupied by St Lucian diplomat, Earl Huntley – a facility that was closed in 2004 “following the interruption of democratic governance” (when former President Jean Bertrand Aristide was voluntarily/involuntarily whisked away in the face of violent political clashes) and only re-opened in 2007 through the largesse of the Canadian government.

It can be said that the assembling of Caricom aviation officials for a workshop in Haiti the very day of the earthquake constituted a “Caricom” presence in the country. But, was Caricom there?

We have to be truthful. The answer is NO.

As I have argued over the years Caricom, as an institution, was never prepared for Haiti’s membership. The Caricom Secretariat struggled with issues of language, bureaucratic culture, political dynamic and geography for years, since the initial move to bring Haiti into the fold in the mid 1990s.

The countries of Caricom have also never fully come to terms with Haitian membership. Many Haitian officials (not, now, including those with diplomatic passports), journalists, artistes and business persons have faced the embarrassment and inconvenience of restrictive visa regimes for travel by Haitians within Caricom. Even when the experiment of a “single domestic space” for the Cricket World Cup was initiated in 2007, Haitians continued to be discriminated against by Caricom member countries.

It is true that the first time and only time I went to Haiti was in 1994 and I remember having to apply for a Haitian visa in Miami then. That requirement was eventually dropped around the time provisional membership was accorded the country in 1998. But, to date, not even those Caricom states not immediately affected by the inflow of Haitian economic refugees have budged with this restriction.

Yet, during visits to Guyana and Jamaica in the days following the earthquake, I witnessed a caring and generousity on the part of Caricom nationals that I must say I have only witnessed before through the efforts to put Grenada back on its feet following the impact of Hurricane Ivan back in 2004.

Yes, Caricom arrived in Haiti through the aid sent, journalistic assignments and the generous monetary contributions of citizens which in some instances exceeded the financial contributions of their countries. And yes, Caricom arrived via the Caribbean Disaster Management Agency and official visits by diplomats and bureaucrats. But, they were not there, they had to arrive.

The failure and inability of the official institution to adopt a leadership posture in even one aspect of the process of rescuing, healing, counseling and protecting the people of Haiti rendered it an irrelevance in the scheme of things.

This is not to blame anyone for anything. It is simply to state a fact.

Haiti, for instance, is due to chair the meeting of Caricom Heads in July. Let’s see.

Pan in Development

I think it might have been some time in 87/88 when the current Trinidad Express Editor-at-Large Keith Smith and I were walking through Independence Square in Port of Spain that I came up with the theory that if Trinidad and Tobago were to abandon oil (we were not yet full swing into natural gas) and our feeble attempts at mass tourism and the 1980s version of (carbon-laden) heavy manufacturing we could have found a suitable developmental alternative in the form of the steelpan industry.

Keith responded with his customary grunt of approval/disapproval which sometimes translated into a smile that really meant: “Bullshit!” Then we turned to talk of politics and how Lloyd Best had been right about the NAR all along. The “bourgeois revolution” was how I described the administration in one “Debate” column.

Soon, the discussion caused me to forget and virtually abandon my steelpan theory.

Then came Best’s version of the same plan. He called it “school in pan” – a play on an official thrust then to put “pan in school”. The head of the country’s largest Hindu organisation had countered at some stage that if the steelpan were to be put in school, so should the dholak, dhantal and sitar.

I suppose he had a point if in all musical instruments we truly find keys to ourselves that do not reside in any other area of human effort; not even the writing of poetry.

But there cannot be any comparison between the playing of pan and the skills required to play the sitar. They are simply different instruments with different requirements for mastery. Which is better? The piano or the guitar?

What makes the two different in the context of Trinidad and Tobago is that the best steelpan players in the world and the best steelbands reside in the place of the instrument’s birth. There is little dispute that the winner of the annual Panorama steelband championship is, without much doubt, the leading steelband in the entire world.

Perhaps in time the baton will pass. It is already passing to some in the United States, Britain, Japan, Scandinavia and other parts of the world where people have recognised the beauty of this instrument. That is par for the course. Black Stalin was mistaken to believe that in legally owning the pan-stick and the pan itself, we could patent the ability to master an instrument.

Pan is also not, of course, the greatest musical instrument in the world. The musicians would explain how technically limited it really is and, therefore, how magnificent the Len Boogsie Sharpes and Robbie Greenidges and Ken Profession Philmores are as masters of the pan.

I suppose what Best meant was that steelbands brought to Trinidad and Tobago society a form of democracy and civility and education that had the potential to bring about the kind of transformation needed to take our country forward. It was thus much more than a question of taking pan to school, but the challenge of taking the school to pan.

I sincerely believe that if Best and I were the ones having that Independence Square chat over 20 years ago he too would have similarly grunted, but filed the thought and come back with it as an offer to promote the nation in pan.

If I remember correctly, I thought then it would have been possible to have downed tools at Pt Lisas and O’Meara and Pointe-a-Pierre and taken up our steelpans as export product, community developer and as a tool to move the country forward politically.

All of this came to mind on February 7 when I sat in the shambles the Ministry of Culture calls the “stands” at Queen’s Park Savannah where people are being asked to witness our greatest moments.

On the stage were both school and pan – Junior Panorama 2010. And I thought, as Mikhail and his colleagues played, that this wonderful experience that brings so much joy to our children was far more important than anything else the country has to offer to them. Much more, certainly, than the bullshit now being called “conference tourism” or the natural gas downstream industries that are proving to be as problematic as they are temporal. The gas, my friends, will run out.

Apologies for the melodrama. It happens every year around this time. And each year I am more convinced that few have truly understood the value of pan and what is possible because of it.

Guns, Gauze and Goodwill in Haiti

I have been following the responses of some in the Caribbean region to the manner in which the rescue and recovery process has unfolded in Haiti over the past few days.

There have been several references to the issue of the impoverishment of the country as a result of reparation payments to France and the non-redemption of a series of international pledges - mostly from the United States.

Now comes the observation that the effort in Haiti has taken on an 'imperialistic' flavour with more guns than gauze - as colourfully rendered in one account widely circulated on the Net.

I am more than a little disappointed that many Caribbean commentators have chosen to ride that particular band-wagon. In my view, there is a hand to bite only because there is a hand that has brought food. This is not to suggest that the offer of food should come with the surrender of sovereignty, but that it is alarming that in the midst of immediate peril and pain, such considerations are finding their way into the public discourse in the Caribbean.

Following the devastation in Grenada in 2004, Trinidadian troops and an army of (TT) state-sponsored clean-up workers and volunteers 'stormed' (in a second wave) the island. In due course, Trinidad and Tobago was being described by several leading personalities in Grenada - in conversations with me - as 'the new imperialists. '

There were almost as many guns as there was gauze and galvanise and goodwill. What was however sometimes missing was graciousness.

Sometimes, in a crisis, I argue, these are all requirements of/for those left in despair and suffering. In the heat of battle, though, space is not often available for contemplation and reason.

There is no guarantee that had Caricom - not the people of Caricom ... the official movement - taken on immediate leadership of the rescue process in Haiti the menu would have been any different. The bread would have still been dropped from helicopters and hungry people taking any available food would have still been 'looters'.

It is clear that our supposed knowledge of the terrain and intimacy with the people of a Caricom ally has meant almost nothing in the current circumstance. This was not the case in Grenada.

This dynamic is not a function of imperialism. It is the product of us not taking responsibility for ourselves. Caricom, as an institution and maybe as a cohesive community, was never, ever prepared for Haiti.

Now for 2010

Professional assignments have meant that it has taken some time for me to catch my bearings regarding the work that needs to be done in 2010 to continue promoting the notion that free societies are evidenced by social justice, equity and an absence of poverty and alienation. This, I suppose, is what people mean when they say they would prefer the freedom to speak their mind as a superior alternative to organised religion and partisan politics.

Everywhere we look in the Caribbean we witness the erosion of freedoms under the guise of development or the need to cope with the demands of growing chaos, social disorder and the violence that follows.

This year, we therefore probably need to keep a sharper eye out for national policy interventions in our countries that claim to promote social order but which at the same time take from us the right to speak, write and otherwise express ourselves freely.

A much clearer menu emerges: i. Broadcasting Policy; ii. Cultural Policy; iii. Trade Policy; iv. Media Policy. These are all traps and codes for censorship and official control.

Let's see what happens.

Returning Home

I have perhaps spent too much time paying attention to the affairs of the wider Caribbean state and not enough on what has been happening in the country of my birth.

Much of this has been fueled by my conviction that the countries subscribing to the notion of a Caribbean Community should have long dropped their claims to individual self-determination in exchange for a broader notion of regional sovereignty. A single Caribbean country. A United States of the Caribbean - all five million of us, with Haiti and Suriname awaiting their respective turns.

Since 1994, I have been employed by institutions in St Lucia, Jamaica and Guyana and have undertaken various professional assignments or participated in conferences and workshops in almost every other English, Spanish, French and Dutch-speaking state in the Caribbean Basin.

In the process, I have come to know Kingston as well as I know Kingstown and Georgetown as well as I know Port of Spain. Moving around Castries is as easy for me as it is to weave through the narrow streets of St John’s or St George’s or Basseterre.

I am yet to identify any substantial distinction in the ethos of these places and their people. What is the difference between Gouyave and Anse la Raye? Is the conch in Nassau sweeter than the lambi St Vincent?

Some cultural antecedents vary through historical accident. The spell-check in the average Guyanese version of Word will not, for instance, include the word ‘parang’ and it takes forever to bury the dead in Jamaica even as Muslims in Trinidad and Guyana measure the time in hours. At one time St Lucian Hindus sent corpses overseas for cremation while in Trinidad and Guyana funeral pyres have been found for ages near waterways and beaches from where the ashes of the dead reach for other shores.

These are stories told by poets and musicians everywhere in these small islands and deceptively large mainland territories where people are joined, almost mystically, by both the past and by the present.

My own journey probably started with the poems of Derek Walcott in my youth followed by a visit with cousins in Barbados in 1979 and family in St Lucia a little later. Then, in the mid 80s, I met the vast rivers of Guyana I only knew through Wilson Harris and earlier Port Royal in Jamaica when I honeymooned with Celia in 1981 in the land of her birth.

But it can however probably be said that I only truly sailed away from Trinidad in 1994 when I took up the challenge of a job at the Caricom Secretariat in Guyana for one year. Since then, my concern about the state of our humanity has not revolved exclusively around the managed chaos of this wildly tossed human salad sprinkled recklessly across two small islands that seem, at times, like a million raindrops on an otherwise sunny day.

I grew to believe that by resolving the pain of all, the agony of the constituent parts would end.

It is the kind of mistake the old socialists made and that capitalism perhaps denies for all the wrong reasons.

Now comes the roguish behaviour and impunity of the Trinidad and Tobago government. On Friday December 18, trade unionist David Abdulah was carted away by the police during a peaceful march against the grossly unjust introduction of a new regime of land and property taxes. There has only been a whisper about its potential unconstitutional character, but the political strategists are perhaps awaiting a date in court.

Friday’s development needs to be placed alongside the new habit of using the Privileges Committee of the country’s parliament to silence dissent. Three journalists and a Senator have recently been referred to the Committee in an attempt to muzzle information and opinion of urgent public importance. In one case, the Committee proposed a ban on journalist, Andre Bagoo.

There is little to distinguish this behaviour from that displayed by the current parliamentary opposition, the UNC, which, while in office, proposed the most sweeping challenges to free expression the country has witnessed since the achievement of independence in 1962.

These two obvious wrongs do not result in something that is right, though the hypocrisy of some dissenters is painfully obvious to all independent observers. The question of moral authority in such matters also arises when it comes to the involvement of people who served in the UNC administration of 1995. I have neither forgiven them nor plan to forget what happened.

But the immediate question at hand remains the slow but definite descent into autocracy. David’s arrest, though not as traumatic as broadcaster Inshan Ishmael’s seizure and detention in 2007 under anti-terrorism laws, marks an important turning point in relations between the state and the people and emphasizes the unjust nature of what is being proposed and how it is to be introduced.

Some of us are concerned but not entirely surprised it has come to this. The culture of political intolerance is deep-seated and challenged only by the myth of a happy-go-lucky, freedom loving society.

The more I think about it, the more I think about truly returning home.

The ACM Story

It is now eight years since a group of journalists from all over the English-speaking Caribbean got together under a PAHO banner in Barbados and decided to launch the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM). The name was actually the idea of Terry Ally who thought we should simply play with the name of our predecessor organisation - the Caribbean Association of Media Workers (Camwork) so as to maintain some kind of connection with the group that had gone defunct.

We have ended up with a rather clumsy construction that has many new-comers use the acronym ACMW. We have in fact started using 'MediaWorkers' as one word and maintained the capital 'W'. A bit inconvenient and irregular, but we survive.

Some of our international friends have even asked about the term 'media workers' and why we don't simply say Association of Caribbean Journalists (ACJ) and done wid dat ...

I however think we need to maintain our description as an organisation of 'media workers' to keep the notion of a wider, more flexible arrangement for membership. This, in my view, makes perfect sense as we look at how the media are being re-arranged and reconfigured in the new digital age.

But, more about all of that another time. In a few days, we meet for the fifth time as an organisation and I am very proud of that fact. We have done this without the kind of significant resources Camwork once benefited from. We do not have a single significant financial benefactor and have been able to meet on a fairly regular basis through creative engagements with friends and institutional partners.

I look forward to Grenada over the next few days and our Fifth Biennial General Assembly. Will keep you informed.