BIBI SAFAOORA SALIM IS BEING QUESTIONED ABOUT THE FACEBOOK POST.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Friday April 1, 2016 – A 52-year-old woman in Guyana has been detained by police over a Facebook post in which she wrote that President David Granger should get a bullet to the head.
Bibi Safaoora Salim was held yesterday and is being questioned by officers in the Criminal Investigations Department.
She had allegedly posted on her Facebook page: “Granger want a bullet in head…I am out of a job now because of them.”
Police are also searching for two overseas-based Guyanese who made comments about Guyanese of African descent that could incite hostility or ill-will on grounds of race.
According to local media reports, they could be charged under the Racial Hostility Act, Chapter 23 of which states that “a person shall be guilty of an offence if he wilfully 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 words spoken by him in a public place or spoken by him and transmitted for general reception by wireless telegraphy or telegraph; or by causing words spoken by him or by some other person to be reproduced in a public place from a record; or by means of written matter or pictorial matter published by him”.
A Canadian-based Guyanese businessman, Victor Singh, has denied that he was responsible for disparaging comments about black Guyanese made on a social media account attributed to him.
He said the Facebook account on which the statements were posted was fake.
“I observed on Facebook and Guyana’s mainstream media many attempts to smear my character by linking me to an uncivilized Facebook thread containing racial incitement, nudity and incendiary rhetoric with threats on the life of Guyanese, inclusive of President David Granger,” he said in a statement.
“I arrived at the conclusion of the attempts to implicate me because my photographs were taken from my authentic Facebook profile and imported into the contentious post on social media. I can with complete confidence say that the particular fake profile bearing a similar name to mine is no way connected to me.”