When Truth Becomes a Crime in Guyana

Jan 14, 2026 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Stanley Basdeo’s arrest under the pretext of “cybercrime” is not an isolated judicial matter; it is a mirror held up to the soul of our Republic. It exposes a state machinery more interested in silencing its citizens than listening to them, and a legal regime being bent into a blunt instrument against critics rather than a shield for the vulnerable. In every autocratic society, loyalty is temporary and usefulness is transactional.

Those applauding or excusing state overreach today may soon find themselves the next expendable target once their silence no longer serves the power structure.

The Guyanese Critic double standard

If this Cybercrime Act were genuinely about decency, public order and protection from harm, the enforcement landscape would look very different. Social media personality Mikhail “Guyanese Critic” Rodrigues has built a brand on vulgarity, racial invective, wild accusations and public humiliation of anyone who departs from his preferred narrative.

His record is not a matter of speculation:

• He has been widely condemned for racist remarks in his videos, triggering public outrage across communities.[guyanachronicle]
• Businessmen such as Nazar and Azruddin Mohamed and others have had to resort to multi-million-dollar libel and defamation actions over his defamatory allegations.
• He has hurled accusations at political actors and private citizens alike, often in language unfit for broadcast and utterly contrary to any serious media code of conduct.

Yet for all of this, the official regulators and enforcers of “online conduct” appear selectively blind. While critics of the government find themselves arrested, charged and dragged before the courts under the Cybercrime Act, Rodrigues is rewarded with access and proximity — including being allowed, notoriously, to sit in government press conferences and even influence who gets to ask questions.

Unequal law, corrupted consent

This is where silence becomes complicity. When a government-aligned commentator who routinely deploys expletives, racist tropes and unverified allegations is effectively given a free pass, while a businessman is arrested for raising concerns about alleged corruption, what is being enforced is not law, but loyalty. Guyana has a history of media monitoring bodies and codes of conduct designed to promote balance, accuracy and respect in political coverage. Those frameworks were meant to restrain precisely the kind of reckless, abusive commentary that now flourishes when it is politically convenient, even as the state reaches for the harshest possible tools when speech cuts against those in power.[aceproject +3]

In this environment, the message to ordinary citizens is chillingly clear:

• If you defend the government and attack its opponents, you enjoy impunity and access.
• . If you question power, you risk handcuffs, court dates and public vilification.

This is the anatomy of authoritarian drift. A statute justified on the grounds of combating cyberbullying and online abuse is instead applied most aggressively to critics, while some of the worst abusers of the digital space are embraced as useful attack dogs.

Warning to the “connected.”

Those who believe their political connections protect them should study history carefully. A state that normalises the criminalisation of dissent will, in time, criminalise mere disagreement. The same machinery that today looks the other way when a pro-government personality tramples basic standards of decency can tomorrow be turned on any voice that falls out of favour, no matter how loyal they once were. Corruption does not demand loyalty; it demands submission. It consumes even its most enthusiastic servants once their usefulness wanes. The “connected” who now smirk at Basdeo’s plight or mock those raising alarms would do well to understand that a legal system bent for partisan ends will not straighten itself when their turn comes.

Guyana is witnessing a slow moral corrosion — the erosion of free speech through fear, and the normalization of repression through law. The enforcement arm is not guided by justice, but by political convenience and partisan utility.

The choice before citizens, journalists and business leaders is stark:

• Remain silent in the face of this blatant double standard, and become complicit in the death of democratic space.
• Or speak up, insist that laws apply equally to all, and reject a system where one man is jailed for alleged “cybercrime” while another is celebrated for behaviour far viler and more destructive.

Basdeo’s case is the canary in the coal mine. Ignore it — and ignore the obscene contrast between how he is treated and how the “Guyanese Critic” is indulged — and tomorrow the air may no longer be safe for any of us to breathe.

Sincerely, 
Hemdutt Kumar

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• crime, Cybercrime, Hemdutt Kumar, Letters, truth

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