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There are mixed views from lawyers to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s re­cent warn­ing about so­cial me­dia com­men­tary by cit­i­zens dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), with some say­ing his com­ments do not sug­gest there is any le­gal breach but oth­ers urg­ing cau­tion about what is said on­line as well as over the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sti­fling of free speech.

Je­re­mie made the state­ment in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, short­ly be­fore law­mak­ers vot­ed to ex­tend the SoE by three months. He de­fend­ed the de­ten­tion, dur­ing the last SoE, of a woman who shared an im­age of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s home and tagged Venezue­lan of­fi­cials while sug­gest­ing it be tar­get­ed.

Say­ing threats against the PM will not be tol­er­at­ed dur­ing the lat­est SoE, Je­re­mie said, “In some ter­ri­to­ries, you go to jail for that. In oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, you are shot for that.”