Hinds on Sedition Act: Laws always under review

MINISTER of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds told a briefing at his ministry on June 4 that Cabinet always keeps Trinidad and Tobago's laws under review, when asked if the Sedition Act needed an overhaul.

He was asked if it was time to review the act, whose archaic references include the "Soviet Union" and "Czechoslovakia" and, among other things, to insert a "public interest" defence and a recognition of media freedom.

The Sedition Act was used to charge Canadian video blogger Chris "Chris Must List" Hughes after he interviewed various gun-toting youths who had expressed their life disaffections. Those videos were uploaded to the YouTube website.

After six days in a police cell, Hughes was granted $100,000 bail on June 4 by Master Margaret Sookraj-Goswami.

Asked if Cabinet was keeping abreast of such laws – to balance the rights of the individual versus the collective – Hinds could not say what Cabinet would do, but said it meets to formulate positions.

"More generally, laws are always under review," Hinds said. "The attorney general is the legal adviser to the Cabinet, and I can tell you the attorney general is forever looking at laws.

"As we speak now, committees are meeting – different aspects of the law – constantly reviewing the law.

"So in that general sense, the answer is yes."

Offences under the act include an intention to bring the Government, Constitution and/or Parliament into "hatred or contempt," or to "raise discontent or disaffection" amongst inhabitants.

The act added, "But an act, speech, statement or publication is not seditious by reason only that it intends to show that the Government has been misled or mistaken in its measures, or to point out errors or defects in the Government or Constitution as by law established, with a view to their reformation, or to excite persons to attempt by lawful means the alteration of any matter in the State."