Michelle Loubon

St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus his­to­ry lec­tur­er/vice chair­man of the Board of Gov­er­nors at Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh says the state of emer­gency should have been im­ple­ment­ed a decade ago. To date, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs said a to­tal of 462 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed in­clud­ing al­leged gang lead­ers Cedric Burke and Keon Bain. Com­ment­ing on the dras­tic move to erad­i­cate crime, Teelucks­ingh said: "I think it should have been im­ple­ment­ed a decade ago. It should have been in force for about six months to deal with crime and nip it in the bud. Over­all, it's good de­ci­sion but late. He not­ed mem­bers of the old­er gen­er­a­tion were com­par­ing the present lock­down to the Black Pow­er move­ment.

Teelucks­ingh begged to dif­fer. He said: "It is un­fair to com­pare it with 2011. Black Pow­er Move­ment did not have mur­ders and kid­nap­pings. We should be mind­ful of that. It was about ad­dress­ing racism, work­ers' rights and so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­bal­ances." Teelucks­ingh was adamant that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar need­ed to make a dras­tic in­ter­ven­tion. "If this state of emer­gency was not en­forced some­thing would have erupt­ed in T&T. We were head­ing down a precipice."

Lock­down chal­lenges

Teelucks­ingh was aware some cit­i­zens have ex­pressed the view their fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms have been tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed. But he said it was part of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. He added: "Some peo­ple be­lieve their rights and free­doms have been tak­en away. In a democ­ra­cy, we have free­dom to speak, to write and prayer. Yet, cer­tain bound­aries ex­ist." "We have free­dom of speech but we can't curse. We have free­dom of speech but we can­not ut­ter trea­son against the gov­ern­ment. We have to be mind­ful of the bound­aries with­in which our free­dom is test­ed." An­oth­er neg­a­tive fac­tor was that in­no­cent peo­ple were be­ing la­belled "gang­sters."

"It is be­ing done with­out suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence. I think that is where some peo­ple would be just­ly con­cerned about their rights be­ing in­fringed up­on." He cit­ed the ex­am­ple of a neigh­bour re­port­ing an­oth­er neigh­bour to the po­lice for drug-traf­fick­ing. Teelucks­ingh said: "If you tell the po­lice I am a gang­ster, you could send me to jail. The po­lice have a lot of au­thor­i­ty." He al­so knocked the ad hoc man­ner in which peo­ple were be­ing cart­ed off to the pris­ons re­sult­ing in over­crowd­ing. "You need to have a venue to keep these peo­ple. A prop­er fa­cil­i­ty should have been thought about. You can­not hold a cit­i­zen and put them in the same prison with mur­der­ers, rapists, kid­napp­pers and con men."

A re­port said there were 11 in­mates to a cell at the Gold­en Grove Prison in Arou­ca. Prison of­fi­cers have com­plained about the se­vere over­crowd­ing. Teelucks­ingh ex­pressed sym­pa­thy for the small busi­ness­men who make a liv­ing at night. He said: "They are hurt­ing the most. I don't mean the DVD pi­rates. Peo­ple like dou­bles, pud­ding, corn and souse ven­dors. The cin­e­ma own­ers are ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed."