Barbados and a few other Caribbean countries seem to be awakening to the monumentally important role Caribbean, African, and Pacific nations can play in the ongoing struggle to advance the cause of justice, equality, and equity in today’s world.

The leadership of the Caribbean, in recent years, has been spearheading the fight for debt relief, the setting up of a climate mitigation fund to help small developing states deal with the fallout from global climate change, and for reparatory justice.

Barbados recently became the latest Caribbean state to revisit and revise its antiquated and LGBTQ unfriendly legislation on buggery. The conversation on civil domestic partnerships has started, thus opening the possibility for future legislation endorsing same-sex marriage in Barbados. This is indeed progress for the Caribbean and hopefully as more people and politicians gain the courage to question the discriminatory orientation endemic to the Abrahamic faith, this discriminatory orientation can be consigned to the dustbin of history in the Caribbean.

While we are making some baby steps forward on the important issue of extending human right to all irrespective of race, nationality, religion, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, it seems as though we here in the Caribbean are being seduced by the dark side of the force with regards to equally important aspects of respect for human rights and dignity.

Free speech seems to be one of the rights that may very well take a battering if a proposed Bill to put a squeeze on pornography is passed in Barbados. The new Computer Misuse Bill is supposed to empower the law enforcement agents to go after various forms of pornography online. While it is true that there is a need to update the laws to match the current sophistication of cybercriminals, legislation on grooming needs to be considered carefully.

Historically alerts minds would know that many heinous crimes against humanity were committed in the past by supposed well-meaning zealots who just wanted to protect the tenets of religion or save societies from demonic infestations. The inquisition, witch-hunts, and the blood crimes which culminated with the Holocaust under the Nazi regime originated with sentiment similar to protecting the rights of children.

Paedophiles are a dangerous class of criminals that present an existential threat to childhood and innocence. Law enforcement agencies, therefore, need to be properly equipped to track down and punish this very dangerous class of criminals. Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean, however, should not give into the temptation of passing draconian laws that could produce something akin to the witch craze that infected Salem in the late 17th century.

An adult complimenting a child could be grooming or it could be an honest act on the part of the adult. Paying a compliment to another human being, regardless of age, is not a crime, and therefore should not be criminalised. The problem stems from the reality that a law against grooming, in and of itself, would criminalise many forms of self-affirmation given by adults to children. Such laws also would create a climate of mischief where aggrieved individuals could use the laws against their enemies.

One can only wonder how inconsequential the beating of Rodney King and the killing of George Floyd would have been if both incidents had not been recorded by some concerned citizen. While we may agree that videos showing schoolchildren fighting are not in good taste, the problem is not the person recording the fight. Penalising the recorder is therefore pointless unless some issue of national security is involved. Protecting agents of the State from being recorded while performing their duties would be both self-serving on the part of the Government and would give the State agents an added aura of untouchability.

Barbados and some of its neighbors are definitely on the right path vis a vis granting greater protection and full human rights to members of the LGBTQ community. In so doing, we have taken one step forward. The Computer Misuse Bill, should it include legislation that criminalises adults offering compliments to children, or individualss recording others engaging in senseless antisocial behaviour, or the police engaged in criminal or antisocial behaviour would represent us taking two steps backward and, as with the Inquisition and the witch-hunts of the past, we may all be forced to tremble.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Cente and author of The Rebirth of Black Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or rodeneynimrod2@gmail.com.