Marijuana activist Nazma Muller was arrested and charged for using obscene language during a protest outside Parliament on Friday, 18 October 2019.[1] Muller said she was arrested for chanting, “Free the f---ing weed.”[1] She was released on own bail at about 8 pm the same evening.[1] In a Facebook post she wrote that police tried to keep her for the weekend, that a senior officer told her she could get station bail, and that she was taken into a room and asked to raise her top.[1]
Global Voices reported that she was arrested under Section 49 of the Summary Offences Act, which deals with “violent language and breach of the peace”, and that the offence carries a $200 fine or 30 days’ imprisonment.[2] Muller is a Rastafarian and had announced that morning that she would be outside Parliament from noon to 3 pm reminding the prime minister of his promise to decriminalise cannabis by June 30.[2] Images she posted show her being led away by a police officer, who also took away her sign, which read “Honk your horn for the herb.”[2] She was released from police custody at around 7:30 that evening, after being held at the Central Police Station to be charged.[2] One of her lawyers, Emir Crowne, said the case raised serious constitutional implications for freedom of expression, assembly and association.[2]
Muller, 46, of Cane Farm, Trincity, pleaded not guilty before Magistrate Sarah de Silva in the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court on 21 October 2019.[3] Police prosecutors said two officers would testify against her, and the magistrate ratified the station bail a justice of the peace had granted and adjourned the case to 13 November 2019.[3] At her hearing she pleaded not guilty and told the court she would retain an attorney for the next hearing.[3]
Muller is the founder of the Caribbean Collective for Justice, a registered NGO, and had presented the Prime Minister with a petition to decriminalise marijuana.[1] She criticised the Government’s failure to table decriminalisation legislation in Parliament by June as the Prime Minister had assured, after the Attorney General said in July the legislation would have been ready by September.[1] The Attorney General, Faris Al-Rawi, had led public consultations on the issue, and a Caribbean Marijuana Commission report had called for member states to decriminalise.[3] No cannabis was seized in the arrest; the charge concerns her language at the protest rather than any cannabis offence.[2]
