Gail Alexan­der

The UK For­eign of­fice is mon­i­tor­ing events in Trinidad and To­ba­go's state of emer­gency care­ful­ly for any sig­nif­i­cant de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of hu­man rights, the Of­fice has in­formed a PNM unit in the UK. The 'PNM Abroad' unit head­ed by Pearce Robin­son con­tact­ed UK Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Williams Hague on T&T's SoE and im­pli­ca­tions for hu­man rights in the coun­try. Robin­son, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said he re­ceived a re­ply from Michael Braun of the UK For­eign MIn­istry's Caribbean Desk. Braun said in his let­ter: "Our High Com­mis­sion in Trinidad & To­ba­go has been ob­serv­ing the evolv­ing (SOE) sit­u­a­tion very close­ly."

"Our re­port­ing has shown that con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, the State of Emer­gency was cor­rect­ly en­act­ed, but we are mon­i­tor­ing events care­ful­ly for any se­ri­ous de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of hu­man rights, and re­main in close con­tact with our lo­cal net­work of hu­man rights de­fend­ers." Mean­while, the Op­po­si­tion PNM has con­demned state­ments by Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal on the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion. The PNM said the Gov­ern­ment had found it­self in the very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing to ex­plain to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty how- af­ter al­most 500 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed un­der the leg­is­la­tion- many were now be­ing re­leased due to in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence.

The PNM state­ment said Mooni­lal at­tempt­ed to blame the PNM for mis­lead­ing the Gov­ern­ment on cer­tain pro­vi­sions in the leg­is­la­tion. The PNM stat­ed: "Con­trary to what Mooni­lal said, the Op­po­si­tion nei­ther re­quest­ed nor ne­go­ti­at­ed for any amend­ment with which the Gov­ern­ment was in dis­agree­ment." The PNM said it had warned the Gov­ern­ment against pro­ceed­ing in a cer­tain way with the leg­is­la­tion. PNM added: "The out­come of Gov­ern­ment's in­sis­tence now re­sults in the pos­si­bil­i­ty that many of these per­sons are now in a po­si­tion to bring ac­tions against the State for wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment and pos­si­bly for in­fringe­ment of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights."