Lawyers have backed Home Affairs Minister Wilfred Abrahams’ call for the wearing of camouflage to be decriminalised.
His fellow attorneys have charged that the provision under Section 188 1 (b) of the Defence Act is not only “antiquated” but makes criminals out of citizens when there are more pressing matters for the police to deal with.
Abrahams, the Christ Church East MP and an attorney-at-law, made clear that his view was not the Mottley administration’s position: “This is my position.”
As he addressed Parliament on Tuesday on the Law Revision and Law (Amendment Bill) 2024, which seeks to amend or repeal outdated legislation, Abrahams contended that the ban on camouflage was among outdated statutes.
“Some have irrelevant provisions, some of the language and form and what the law was intended [and] crafted to address has moved on with the passage of time . . . so that while the purpose of the law still exists, you need to go back through the law to make the changes to bring it in line with what exists,” Abrahams said.
“We have in our . . . Act . . . that it is illegal to possess and to wear the disruptive pattern camouflage. If ever there was a piece of legislation that needed changing, it was that.”
The regulations were introduced around the October 1983 United States-led military intervention into Grenada that followed the bloody coup in which Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and ministerial colleagues were assassinated. Barbados was a staging post for the invasion.
“I could understand that at the time that legislation was passed – and I believe that was around the time of the Grenada situation where there were a lot of armed forces in Barbados all at the same time,” said Abrahams. “So all through Barbados, you had different types of camouflage . . . so you didn’t want any confusion with the armed forces. That’s the substance . . . . You didn’t want anybody impersonating a member of the armed forces. So it cannot possibly extend to the fashion that camouflage is now. That cannot possibly extend to a camouflage party dress, it definitely cannot extend to the camouflage speedo. So, my point is, these are things that . . . to me need to be relooked.
“If we want the spirit of that legislation to still continue, then change it, make it an offence to impersonate a member of the armed forces or to dress in such a way as to cause confusion,” Abrahams added.
Veteran criminal defence attorney Andrew Pilgrim SC gave strong support for the minister’s stance.
“For a very long time now, I have been wondering what the purpose of the law was,” he told Barbados TODAY. “It really just is a way that ordinary citizens have been harassed and criminalised for wearing a t-shirt or short pants, some pair of socks or even a bikini, as I saw on one occasion. So it will be good to see this removed. I have long perceived that if an army was hiding in the woods in St George, there would be other ways to deal with it than this camouflage thing.”
Under the legislation, unauthorised wearing in public of “any uniform or part thereof, or any article of clothing made from any of the disruptive pattern materials used for making the military uniform commonly called the ‘camouflage uniform’, or even reproduction of Barbados Defence Force (BDF) “regimental or other distinctive marks” are offences under the Defence Act. The penalty is a fine of $2 000 or one year imprisonment or both.
Defence attorney Shadia Simpson declared “total agreement” with Abrahams: “It is an antiquated law that has resulted in several people getting what I consider to be unnecessary convictions. The resources that we use, whether it be the judicial time or expense, the police time to prosecute these matters, in my opinion, is a waste of time when we have more serious matters that we still can not get out of the court system. So for those reasons, I believe that particular provision within the Act really needs to be changed.”
Attorney-at-law Simon Clarke also agreed with Minister Abrahams.
“I am of the view that camouflage is a fashion style and the majority of the individuals that wear camouflage are not mimicking the members of the BDF. Times have changed, and it is time that the law reflects such.” (BT)
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