GUYANA IS ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL SOCIAL MEDIA - THE NEW FREE SPEECH THREAT - BY DR. LESLIE RAMSAMMY

There is little doubt about the ruinous effects of online thr...eats and hate messages; they can be violently traumatizing. However, whether they should be considered criminal is another question entirely. As we in Guyana and around the world confront the obvious abuse of Social Media for spreading hate and inciting violence, we must remember that a government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because someone in a government finds the idea offensive.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right and any talk of regulating social media raises the specter of suppression of free speech. Social Media has become the new battlefield to protect the sanctity of free speech. Globally, governments are increasingly targeting social media with measures of control, repression and punishment. It is in this regard that the arrest of a woman for hateful messages targeting David Granger, Guyana's President, on Facebook is important.

I am unequivocally opposed to anyone using social media to spread hate, promote disharmony and incite violence, under the disguise of free speech. But who makes the judgment about how and when to curtail someone's right to free expression? The fact that there are vast numbers of people who abuse the space of Social Media to spread hate and incite violence should not tempt any government to deny freedom of speech.
When the People's Progressive Party (PPP) was in government, Social Media spewed the most disgusting hate messages against President Bharat Jagdeo and President Donald Ramotar. The hate messages against PPP Ministers and officials were nauseating and repulsive. In some instances, the attacks were centrally controlled by political parties and officials. Not only were they hateful, they robustly promoted violence against those of us who were in Government.

At that time David Granger, APNU+AFC and others defended the right of those who vigorously spewed hate messages against the PPP Cabinet and Government officials. It was their view that the social media represented protected space for free speech. By and large, the PPP agreed that the social media space was protected although we endured the most vicious of hate speech that people could imagine.

Those hate messages against people like Jagdeo, Ramotar, Sam Hinds, myself and others have not abated, even though we are no longer in government. No one should think that the fury of the internet can be controlled so that they would not also become the subject of those same kind of vile behavior. Now that APNU+AFC has power, they want to stem the tide of vile hate that targets them also.
But when is free speech too dangerous to permit? If hateful social media messages target Jagdeo, then it must be permitted because it is free speech? But if it targets David Granger or APNU+AFC, then it violates the tenets of free speech and must be criminalized? APNU+AFC wants to criminalize ideas and imprison those who express them, not on merit, but on the basis of who was targeted in the messages.

Such biased application of freedom of speech exposes the odiousness and dangers of empowering the Governments to criminalize ideas. We must be careful because those ideas we dislike today might be ideas that you like tomorrow. What happens when the PPP is back in office, then would it be right to criminalize those who attack the PPP and to promote hate against APNU+AFC?
But the challenge to control social media is not unique to Guyana. In 2013, the French Minister for Women Affairs, Njat Vallaud-Belkacem, proposed that the French Government criminalize ideas it did not like, decreeing that hateful tweets are illegal. Like, APNU+AFC, the French Government earlier was using the same arguments that censors, dictators and tyrants of every age and culture have concocted - new technology is making free speech too dangerous to permit. Unfortunately, the temptation for Government control is spreading across Europe, North America, Arab, African and Asian States.

The British used the concept of "hate speech" to criminally prosecute a British muslim teenager for the "crime" of posting a Facebook message stating "all soldiers should die and go to hell" - following the killing of civilians as part of the war in Afghanistan. Yet every day Social Media carries hate speech targeting muslims in Britain and no one has been charged, clearly a discriminatory and biased application of the law making the law an "ass".
Criminal cases for online political speech are now commonplace in the UK. More than 25,000 people in Britain have been investigated in the past three years for comments made online. But the persecution is overwhelmingly directed at the country’s Muslims for expressing political opinions critical of the state’s actions. To put it mildly, not all online “hate speech” or advocacy of violence is treated equally. It is, for instance, extremely difficult to imagine that Facebook users who sanction violence by the UK in Iraq and Afghanistan, or who spew anti-Muslim animus, or who call for the deaths of Gazans, would be similarly prosecuted.