Austin Fido LET ME tell you a little something about Amsterdam (still a visa-free destination for TT citizens). Recently, I have been reading about Beguines: a medieval Catholic order of women who swore vows of chastity, devoting their lives to prayer and service. Critically, they weren’t nuns. Their property was their own and they were entirely free to leave the order (to get married, say) whenever they wished. Beguines would often form their own communities, where they could pray and prosper in peace. The enchanting remains of one such community are visible (and visitable, did I mention visa-free?) today in Amsterdam’s Begijnhof – a grassy canalside courtyard enclosed on all sides by neat rows of centuries-old townhouses. Here you’ll find one of the oldest churches in Amsterdam, the English Reformed Church. When it was consecrated in 1419, the church was neither English nor Reformed, it was Dutch and Catholic and served the community of Beguines who lived around it. Then the Reformation happened, Catholic Amsterdam became a Protestant city, and all articles of Catholicism – particularly the churches – were taken over by the new religion. The Beguines were displaced from their church, but still had their community and their homes. They also had use of a peculiar Dutch tradition which outlawed Catholicism but allowed its practice to continue so long as it stayed out of sight. Essentially, Amsterdam’s Protestant zealots decided Catholicism was like sex: if it’s something you must do, just be sure not to do it out in the open in front of civilised folk. So the Beguines took their worship into their homes. Visit the Begijnhof today and you’ll see the old church with its medieval tower. Directly opposite, there’s a 17th-century townhouse which is home to the Begijnhofkapel, a “hidden church”: residential house on the outside, house of worship on the inside. This, I am told, is a great example of Dutch tolerance. Now if the state took away my church and forced me to turn a neighbouring living room into a chapel, I’d have all sorts of words to describe the situation, but “tolerance” would not be one of them. What on earth has any of this to do with TT? Allow a brief diversion to the USA, and I’ll get there, I promise. Dressing up an entire religion’s banishment as tolerance got me thinking of other things that get described as things they are not. Like free speech. Everyone loves free speech. You might remember the time Elon Musk – currently hacking apart the American government with quasi-religious fervour – declared himself a “free-speech absolutist.” He is absolutely not. He’s currently fighting efforts to get his Department of Government Efficiency to comply with minimal standards of transparency like having actual published records of what it’s doing. And he’s eager to have reporters fired or jailed for standard journalistic stuff like pointing out one of his DOGE employees had papered the internet with wild-eyed racist rantings. Musk isn’t really a supporter of your right to speak freely, just his own. There’s a similar situation in play in TT. We live in a society where parliamentarians hurl slurs at each other in the Red House without fear of legal penalty, but direct that same language to a police officer on the street and you could be arrested. The TT Constitution protects freedom of the press, political views, even “freedom of thought and expression.” But it also apparently allows the government to charge YouTubers with sedition for detailing (gasp) the country’s gang violence. And when that same government declares a state of emergency (SoE) to deal with those same violent gangs, there’s a clause in the legislation prohibiting “statements prejudicial to public order,” ie, regulating speech. To the government’s credit, that particular element of the SoE will be amended. To its discredit, the matter had to be brought to court for that to happen. Apparently the default setting for legislation in TT is “curtail freedom of speech,” until or unless someone objects. This must be more by accident than design. If we know anything about our elected representatives, judging by their behaviour in Parliament and in the public sphere, it’s that they like to speak freely. Newly appointed Prime Minister Young is notoriously among the freest speakers of them all. Why not extend that freedom to the rest of us and revisit the laws in TT that criminalise speech? Austin Fido is a free-speech absolutist and a Caricom passport holder. He thanks Shanti’s Travel Service for patiently indulging many questions about Amsterdam