STATEMENT
BY
HON LESTER B BIRD
PRIME MINISTER OF ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
ON FRIDAY 13TH SEPTEMBER 2002
ON THE OCCASION OF THE SIGNING OF
THE TREATY OF CHAPULTEPEC
IN ST JOHN’S, ANTIGUA

Distinguished Representatives of the Inter-American Press Association, Honourable Ministers, Representatives of the Media, Distinguished Guests

Let me first welcome the Representatives of the Inter-American Press Association.

We are pleased to see you here.

Your organisation declares itself to be “dedicated to defending freedom of expression and of the press throughout the Americas”.

This is a principle which both the political party and the government that I lead also strongly uphold.

In this country, the media is absolutely free and unfettered.

Any casual spectator needs only to read the newspapers here, listen to the radio or watch television to be convinced of the large freedom that exists in Antigua and Barbuda.

It was not always so.

Indeed, the battle to establish and uphold press freedom started here in 1974, twenty years before your organisation launched The Declaration of Chapultepec setting out ten principles governing press freedom.

In this sense, the struggle of the political party that I lead preceded the efforts of your organisation and symbolises the common ground on which we are met today.

In 1974, the political party from which the present opposition party is sprung formed the government.

That government cast a stain upon the history of this country by introducing the most draconian legislation designed to eliminate the free press in Antigua and Barbuda.

Under that vicious legislation, newspaper organisations were required to post an extremely repressive bond, and to pay a prohibitive annual licence before they could publish.

Free speech and the right to publish were crushed with an iron fist. News media and journalists were punished because they exercised their right to criticise the government of the day.

Two of the newspapers that suffered greatest were The Workers Voice, published by the Antigua Trades and labour Union, long the voice of the working people of the country, and The Outlet, published by the Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement.

It is for that reason that I have invited as a special guest today, Leonard Tim Hector, the Editor of The Outlet.

He survives others in the journalistic field who struggled in those dark days to resist the repression of the press by the Progressive Labour Movement government. He represents all those who stood up against the excesses of a government that throttled democracy.

Well-deserved tribute should be paid to him and those others who were part of that struggle.

He continues to publish freely today. My government is often the brunt of his newspaper’s criticism.

We do not like it, and often we take issue with his newspaper’s content. But, we uphold his right to publish without censorship, without fear and without favour.

In 1974 and afterwards, my political party also campaigned strongly against the repressive legislation of the then government.

We argued within our legislative councils and outside of them for a return to freedom and democracy. I recall that I was a young junior counsel in the legal battle waged in the Courts.

We failed to persuade the government of the Progressive Labour Movement which maintained that wicked legislation as a dagger at the heart of free expression.

It fell to my political party when we formed the government in 1976 to repeal this unjust law that restricted a free press and elevated repression to statute.

One of the first acts of my government was the summary removal of this scar upon the face of our democratic ethos.

Today, the media publishes freely without bond, licence or restriction.

Indeed, two sections of the media today publish with no commitment to truth, and no regard for accuracy, fairness and objectivity.

The converse is in fact the case.

Truth is ignored every day in those two sections of the media, and accuracy, fairness and objectivity are treated as mere obstacles to the fulfilment of a low and base purpose.

They have translated their ownership to mean censorship, and freedom to mean abuse.

Despite this, my government has not acted as many others across the world. We have no restrictive tariff and exchange policies; we require no licences for the importation of news print; we jail no journalists; we have imposed no legislation of censorship.

We remain committed to a free society, and while we will challenge libel and defamation in the Courts of Law to which we are all equally subject, we leave it to the Court of public opinion to judge those who devalue freedom by its abuse.

One of the guiding principles of the Inter American Press Association is that “the credibility of the press is linked to its commitment to truth, to the pursuit of accuracy, fairness and objectivity”.

I leave it to your Association to determine whether all your members uphold this principle, and whether, by their actions, some of them may be undeserving of your community.

It should be recalled that it is not the media that makes itself free. Freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press flow from the fundamental commitment of governments to maintain free societies however much freedom is abused.

For my Government’s part, we are committed to a free society where liberty and freedom lie side by side with responsibility and fairness at the heart of our beliefs.

It is in this context that I am pleased to affix my signature as Head of Government of Antigua and Barbuda to the Declaration of Chapultepec.