From Caribbean News Now contributor

LONDON, England — Last year, the Commonwealth secretary general, Dominica-born Baroness Patricia Scotland, filed a complaint over online coverage about her by London’s Mail on Sunday (MoS) with Britain’s Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). The IPSO advised all parties to “preserve confidentiality” of the complaint with nothing more published or passed on until the process was complete, thereby preventing any further negative reporting about Scotland.

However, IPSO has now largely rejected Scotland’s complaint, upholding just two minor aspects, neither of which relate directly to Scotland herself.

Articles published last year by the MoS stated that KYA Global, the trading company of Lord Patel, who was said to be Scotland’s friend and self described “partner in crime”, had been awarded two contracts worth a total of £415,000 (US$539,000) to review and reform operations of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

“In fact the total was £180,000. We would also like to make clear that Lord Patel was hired to review the Secretariat, not the baroness’s own performance as may have been suggested by an article on July 31,” the Mail noted in a correction on Saturday.

Scotland has a long history of intimidation and threats of legal action to suppress freedom of the press.

In September 2015, a firm of very expensive libel lawyers in London acting for Scotland sent Caribbean News Now a lengthy letter setting out a laundry list of perceived slights published by us and threatening us with all manner of legal jeopardy should we fail to remove the offending articles.

We responded with a detailed rebuttal of the complaints made by Scotland and thereafter heard nothing further on the matter.

In another move to extinguish criticism of Scotland, the same law firm, Carter Ruck, in late February/early March of this year wrote on her behalf to the publishers of The Round Table, Britain’s oldest international affairs journal (founded in 1910), which provides analysis and commentary on all aspects of international affairs affecting the Commonwealth.

Specifically, Carter Ruck, acting for Scotland, took exception on this occasion to a “Commonwealth Update” article entitled “Bumpy start for new SG” published by The Round Table and written by Guardian journalist Oren Gruenbaum, the Commonwealth Update editor.

Carter-Ruck, acting on the secretary-general’s behalf, alleged that, by giving further publicity to the allegations against her, the article was defamatory and demanded its withdrawal from circulation.

For reasons best known to itself, the journal decided not to challenge Scotland’s assertions as we had done but to withdraw the article from its website and not to distribute any further hard copies, which seemed to many to be an exercise in futility since such copies were already in circulation in both printed and electronic form – one of which, courtesy of one of our readers, may be found here.

While Gruenbaum’s purpose and/or agenda in writing the largely factual article in question may be somewhat obscure, we certainly defend his right and that of The Round Table to freedom of expression, notwithstanding that Gruenbaum maligned Caribbean News Now in an earlier piece promoting Scotland’s candidacy for Commonwealth secretary general by describing us as “an anonymous website hiding behind a Dallas PO box address”.

Why Gruenbaum chose to ignore the fact that the same contact page on our website also includes an email address, phone number and fax number in addition to a mailing address, and attempted to impugn our critiques of Scotland in this “shoot the messenger” manner, remains a mystery, especially given his more recent and allegedly libelous “bumpy start” article, unless he is now disappointed and resentful that his favoured candidate has not exactly covered herself in glory after achieving office.

Certainly, Carter Ruck found us neither anonymous nor hard to contact in threatening to sue us on Scotland’s behalf.

During a visit to St Kitts and Nevis in June 2015, Scotland was quoted as saying, “Don’t judge me by what I say, but what I have done.”

It seems, however, that when she is actually judged by what she has done – or perhaps not done – she goes to great lengths and expense in attempting to suppress such judgment.

IMAGE: scotland.jpg

Baroness Patricia Scotland

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Caribbean-baroness-again-attempts-to-suppress-freedom-of-the-press-35150.html

EDITOR: We at iNews Cayman have also received a threatening letter from lawyers for Baroness Scotland ordering us to remove an article that originated from Mail On Sunday.