TRINIDAD: State of Emergency in More Ways Than One

•  port of spain
• Wednesday, September 07, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Roget is the president of the powerful Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) which, along with 18 other trade unions, is planning a nationwide strike, accusing the Kamla Persad Bissessar administration of refusing to lift a five-percent cap on wages in its negotiations with public service workers.

'We are firm, if we were not before, that this state of emergency was not necessary and that it was called to deal with the campaign that we initiated to raise public awareness,' he said, adding that the government saw the SOE as a way 'to kill more than one bird with the same stone'.

The National Workers Union (NWU) said that the government was using the state of emergency as a pretext for an 'assault on freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of movement and freedom of expression'.

The government used its overwhelming majority in the Parliament on Sunday to extend the SOE. And while it did reduce the eight-hour curfew to six hours, it has brushed aside the unions' position, insisting that the SOE was meant to prevent bloodshed.

National Security Minister retired Brigadier John Sandy, defending the SOE, told Parliament that if the SOE had not been implemented, what would have happened would have made tragic events in Trinidad in 1990 seem like a 'Christmas party' in comparison.

In 1990, members of the radical Jamaat Al Muslimeen group tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the then-government of ANR Robinson. They killed at least 24 people, including a legislator, during their assault on the police building and Parliament in which they held a number of people, including Robinson, hostage.

The government argued that recent successes by the security forces against those involved in the illegal drug trade, including a multi- million-dollar bust at the island's international airport last month, had made the country vulnerable to planned retaliations that could have only resulted 'in senseless, violent bloodshed and mayhem'.

Moreover, officials pointed to the murder of 11 people over a 48-hour period last month to justify the SOE and, according to Prime Minister Persad Bissessar, the murders were evidence that public safety threats were 'real and imminent'.

Addressing Parliament on Sunday, Bissessar said that the declaration of the SOE had caught the criminals off guard and that 'the crisis has been averted'. Promising the 'war on crime' would continue, Bissessar told Parliament more than 33 guns and 1,700 rounds of ammunition had been seized since Aug. 21.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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