Kaieteur News & Stabroek News in violation of Racial Hostility Act.

The Kaieteur News and Stabroek News are in hot water following a complaint by Office of the President to the Ethnic Relations Committee over their publication of numerous letters and commentaries which seek to promote racial security in Guyana.
The Racial Hostility (Amendment) Act 2002 states that a person shall be guilty of an offence if he willfully excites or attempts to excite hostility or ill will against any section of the public, or against any person on the grounds of their or his race by means of, among other things, “written (including printed) matter or pictorial matter published by him. Persons found guilty under the act can be fined $500,000 and jailed for seven years.

A section of the act also states that the proprietor, printer, publisher or editor of any newspaper, or the printer of any printed document, in which any particular matter has been published, shall be presumed himself to have so published that matter unless he proves that such publication was made without his authority, consent or knowledge and did not arise from want of due care on his part.

Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon dispatched a letter to the ERC asking the commission to look into recent articles and letters which appeared in both newspapers saying that the items are contrary to the laws of Guyana and “warrants the attention of the ERC”.