Kingston, Jamaica.
The PRESS Association of Jamaica (PAJ) and Media Association Jamaica (MAJ) have urged members of a joint select committee reviewing the cybercrime law to reject proposals to include criminal defamation in the amended law.
In earlier submissions to the committee, the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions argued that cyber-defamation should be criminalised in the proposed new statute.
Cyberdefamation is committed on the Internet through websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, emails, chat rooms, instant messaging, and other forms of social media.
In a robust presentation to the committee earlier this week, Dionne Jackson Miller, a PAJ representative, argued that a proposal to criminalise cyberdefamation was inconsistent with efforts to reform defamation laws in Jamaica, and would go against current international trend.
Jackson Miller told committee members that criminalising cyberdefamation was detrimental to freedom of expression, noting that freedom of the press was a subset of this constitutional right.
"The courts can, and in the case of decided case law, have shown that they are quite capable of dealing with the issue of cyberdefamation in the context of civil law, which is where we believe that defamation belongs," Jackson-Miller said.
"If Jamaica were ever to take the backward step of actually passing a law, criminalising cyberdefamation, Jamaica would be sending a message to the international community that it condones and intends to implement what has been increasingly recognised as an archaic law," she added. She concluded that any such move would not go unnoticed locally or by international watchdog groups.
