By Larisa Manescu
This plea came on Oct. 10, which marks the three-year anniversary of the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles. Since the change in legal status in 2010, the three Caribbean islands have been autonomous constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The problem IPI is addressing is common in the Caribbean: defamation and libel cases are considered to be criminal offenses, instead of being categorized under civil law.
Additionally, a big concern for freedom of expression and public dialogue in the islands is that punishments increase when a public official or institution is defamed.
In 2012, IPI launched a campaign to repeal criminal defamation in the Caribbean, labeling it an outdated concept that remains more or less uniform across the region. That year, IPI published a report on criminal defamation in the Caribbean, highlighting Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago. The report stated that all 13 independent Caribbean countries have criminal defamation laws, and while many legislative reforms were being considered, none were enacted.
“In three of the countries that we visited, top elected officials expressed agreement with our position that criminal libel laws are colonial-era relics designed to suppress dissent and criticism and have no place in the modern democracies of the Caribbean,” IPI executive director Alison Bethel McKenzie said.
Although Grenada removed libel from its penal code in 2012 after IPI lobbying, the nation recently passed a controversial Electronic Crimes Act in September that aims to tackle defamation of individuals on the Internet by punishing information that is “grossly offensive” or that is known to be false but is spread to cause “annoyance…insult, injury…ill will.” Offenders would pay a fine of up to EC$100,000 (or US$37,037) or spend up to a year in prison.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
