The sedition laws included in the controversial Cybercrime Act, which criminalises utterances against the Government of the day and which were introduced by the former A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government, will be reviewed and removed at the appropriate time.
This revelation was made by Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Gail Teixeira, while she was fielding questions from the parliamentary Opposition during the examination of the budget estimates for her Ministry in the National Assembly on Monday.
At the time, the Opposition was questioning allocations to the security services and whether such monies would go towards spy equipment.
This was vehemently denied by Teixeira, who noted that the Government had better things to do than monitor the Opposition. She also informed that the sedition laws will be removed from where they were included in the Cybercrime Act.
“Just to remind the Honourable Member, the laws of this country and one of them is called the Interception of Communications Act, where any security entity in Guyana wishing to tap anybody’s phone or intercept it, they would have to go to the court and the court gives permission.”
“And so the issue is that the laws of Guyana provide for interception for crime-fighting etcetera. And by the way who brought in the sedition laws again? It’s you! The sedition laws were removed in this country in 1997. And it was brought back into the Cybercrime Act, a retrogressive Act. And it will be removed, Sir. At the appropriate time,” she also said.
Back in 2018 and unmoved by the criticism of the then PPP Opposition, organisations and individuals who spoke out against the move to place the sedition clause into the Cybercrime Bill, the APNU/AFC Government had pushed through the Bill and signed it into law.
Clause 18 of the Bill had stated that persons commit an offence of sedition when they, “attempt to bring into hatred or excite disaffection towards the Government.” These provisions have, in fact, excited worry among social media users, young people and Guyanese as a whole.
Since the introduction of the legislation, many members of the public have sought to criticise the clauses and Government, while calling for it to be removed from the Bill; the original purpose being to protect Guyanese and their children from the dangers of cyberspace.
The then Minister of State Joseph Harmon had claimed that people are taking that section of the Bill out of context. He maintained that the words in that specific clause speak to threats to national security.
Laid in the National Assembly since 2016, the Cybercrimes Bill had catered for, inter alia: illegal access to a computer system; illegal interception; illegal data interference; illegal acquisition of data; illegal system interference; unauthorised receiving or granting of access to computer data; computer-related forgery; computer-related fraud; offences affecting critical infrastructure; identity-related offences; child pornography; child luring, and violation of privacy among a sleuth of other offences.
Presently, several Members of Parliament from the Opposition are before the court charged with cybercrime. In addition, citizens have also been charged under the Act.
