PNM slams minister’s push for US to revoke visas over social media posts

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment is con­demn­ing a pro­pos­al for the Unit­ed States to re­voke the visas of peo­ple who cause “mis­in­for­ma­tion” on so­cial me­dia.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said he would write to Charge d’Af­faires of the US Em­bassy Dr Jenifer Nei­d­hart de Or­tiz, where he would sug­gest that the US gov­ern­ment re­voke the visas of US-based so­cial me­dia users who spread “pro­pa­gan­da and fear” and “place our se­cu­ri­ty forces at risk.”

Al­ready, the visa of ac­tivist and busi­ness­man Gary Aboud was re­voked by the US Em­bassy.

But yes­ter­day, the PNM, in a state­ment, de­scribed the move as “un­ac­cept­able, un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and fun­da­men­tal­ly hos­tile to the prin­ci­ples of free ex­pres­sion.”

The PNM em­pha­sised the val­ue of free, in­de­pen­dent, ob­jec­tive me­dia in T&T, not­ing their im­por­tance in ex­pos­ing wrong­do­ing, while hold­ing lead­ers to ac­count.

The par­ty al­so ac­cused Alexan­der of at­tempt­ing to sti­fle free­dom of ex­pres­sion.

For­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young, in a Face­book post, de­scribed Alexan­der’s re­marks and sug­ges­tions as “alarm­ing.” He urged the Gov­ern­ment to ex­er­cise cau­tion when con­sid­er­ing the rights of peo­ple to free­dom of speech.

“These are very dan­ger­ous de­vel­op­ments. Is it this Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy to use dic­ta­to­r­i­al ac­tions to si­lence per­sons who have dif­fer­ent opin­ions to theirs?

“We can­not sim­ply ig­nore these clear and present threats to our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and lib­er­ties.”

How­ev­er, Young said peo­ple mak­ing vi­o­lent threats or defam­a­to­ry state­ments via so­cial me­dia should be held ac­count­able.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, in a video shared on so­cial me­dia, al­so ques­tioned the ba­sis for Alexan­der’s sug­ges­tion.

Grif­fith not­ed that while he agreed that those is­su­ing threats via so­cial me­dia should be dealt with by the po­lice, he did not feel that lob­by­ing a for­eign gov­ern­ment to re­voke some­one’s visa was the ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse.

“For the 30-odd years I have been in pub­lic ser­vice, nev­er in my life have I ever seen a politi­cian who holds a po­si­tion of au­thor­i­ty in a gov­ern­ment, write to an­oth­er coun­try to re­voke the visas of cit­i­zens in your own coun­try.

“It can very well be per­ceived as a dog whis­tle to muz­zle cit­i­zens in mak­ing com­ments that may be in con­trast to the gov­ern­ment of T&T, but that is their right.”