Corruption Abounds as Bahamian Parliament Threatens to Jail Lawyer and Judge in Environmental Scandal

Undercover police raided an environmental activist’s home. Cabinet ministers hacked and then released to the media emails and sensitive financial information from an environmental group. When the Supreme Court ruled that the cabinet ministers had violated the environmentalists’ right to privacy, the ministers tried to jail the environmental group’s lawyer and the judge who decided the case.

Are these assaults on civil and human rights and the rule of law taking place in some far-away, fragile, failed state, teetering on the brink of dictatorship? Unfortunately, this is happening less than 100 miles from Florida in the Bahamas, a long-standing democracy, American ally and member of the British Commonwealth.

Bahamian officials’ alliance with a billionaire polluter, has created a constitutional crisis in their island nation—and cause for concern for their country’s freedom-loving allies on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/508370394320232448 business when really it’s already contracting.”

If such privacy infringements are allowed to stand, it would set a legal precedent that could undermine banking privacy not just in the Bahamas, but in other Commonwealth banking centers such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

Abandoning the rule of law, stomping on privacy rights, and publicly savaging and jailing sitting judges, lawyers and environmental and human rights NGOs clashes with the Bahamas’ hard-won image as a financial and tourist haven. It’s time for level-headed leaders in the Bahamas to step in and fix this fiasco before more lasting damage is done.