Cathy Hughes clears air on alleged Facebook post

Following the Ethnic Relations Commission launching an investigation into an inciting comment allegedly made by Alliance For Change (AFC) Member of Parliament (MP), Catherine Hughes, the politician took the opportunity and cleared the air on the issue yesterday.
Recently, a post was made on his Facebook by attorney-at-law Nigel Hughes, Hughes’ husband, regarding an altercation between relatives of the slain Henry cousins and police ranks. A screenshot of a comment supposedly made by the AFC MP started circulating. In the screenshot Hughes was seen saying “Why, Why, Why. Has this family not had more than most can bear? Madness” to which someone responded, “It seems to me as though someone wants a civil war in this country, our people are being too quiet and these people need attention”. The image then showed Hughes supposedly responding to the comment saying “This country needs a civil war”.

After the image circulated the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) released a statement stating that they have expeditiously started an investigation into the comment that was “calling for an undesirable and dangerous action which can potentially impact negatively on ethnic relations”.
During a virtual press conference hosted by the AFC yesterday, Hughes denied making the comment, saying that it was “fraudulent” and “wholly untrue”.

The MP then shared an original version of the screenshot highlighting that it was photoshopped. “What the culprit did is to create a screen shot of part of the conversation thread. He or she then created a fake screen shot in which they forged a response purported to be from me, and inserted the forged comment into the fake screenshot. It is this fake screenshot, maliciously doctored and tampered with, that was shared on several whatsapp chats,” Hughes said.

Giving a side by side view of the original and tampered image, she pointed out that the font used in the fake screenshot was different from the font in the original image. She further stated that if persons were to check Nigel Hughes’ original post on his Facebook page her authentic statement as shown in her screenshots would reveal a different version of what was said in the fake screenshot.
She lamented that the allegations has caused severe and untold damage to her character and she would have reported the matter to the Commissioner of Police and responded to a request for information from the ERC.

”This is a cybercrime and given my strong personal stand against racism in all its forms I wish to ensure that my name is cleared. What is worrying is that this is easy to do, has happened to many persons with dire and dangerous consequences and will happen to many others given today’s technology,” she expressed.

She said that the proper technologically based monitoring of our social media environment is needed and is the foundation on which accurate forensic investigation should be conducted. Hughes stated that before the 2020 elections; she met with the ERC and discussed the importance of them investing in a digital computer-based media monitoring system rather than “placing persons in front of a TV screen or radio for long hours listening to content”, which she described as old fashioned.

This newspaper attempted to contact the ERC to find out if they did a preliminary investigation to verify the alleged comments made by Cathy Hughes before announcing a larger investigation; if such a preliminary investigation was done, what were the steps involved; and what was found in the preliminary investigation that warranted the public announcement of the current investigation into the alleged post. However, the ERC was unable to give a response before press time.