Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

With his hands fold­ed and his face ex­pres­sion­less, new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er faced a bar­rage of in­sults as he presided over the de­mo­li­tion the High­way Re-Route Move­ment's protest camp in Debe, south Trinidad, ear­ly yes­ter­day. Dur­ing the four-hour ex­er­cise, po­lice hand­cuffed and dragged off the head of the group, Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, while oth­er ac­tivists wept.

The ac­tion start­ed short­ly be­fore 6 am, when more than 50 sol­diers and po­lice of­fi­cers swooped on the camp, tak­ing pro­test­ers by sur­prise. The troops were ac­com­pa­nied by head of the De­fence Force Ken­rick Ma­haraj, Warn­er and ju­nior Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Collin Par­tap.

Deputy camp man­ag­er Eliz­a­beth Ramb­harose came out and plead­ed with Warn­er to al­low them time to re­move their re­li­gious items, as pro­test­ers were en­gaged in a 21-day fast. She said it would be sac­ri­le­gious to break down the camp. Warn­er, how­ev­er, walked in­to the prayer room and per­son­al­ly re­moved some of the items. This trig­gered out­rage as some pro­test­ers be­gan shout­ing racist slurs at Warn­er, say­ing that in­stead of ar­rest­ing crim­i­nals, he was at­tack­ing peace­ful peo­ple.

"You will make a jail...You is Rawan (a de­mon)," Randy Bood­hai shout­ed. An­oth­er pro­test­er, Ramkaran Bhag­wans­ingh, added: "Be­fore the end of the week you and Collin will catch a stroke. It will be worse than Man­ning." Point­ing his fin­ger in Warn­er's face, Bhag­wans­ingh shout­ed: "Is we who put you there. Kam­la is a trai­tor. This Gov­ern­ment will fall."

Warn­er, how­ev­er, stood his ground as army and po­lice moved in with back­hoes to smash the two-month-old camp. Tears rolled down Ramb­harose's face as sol­diers up­root­ed jhan­dis. An hour lat­er, Kublals­ingh ar­rived. He rammed his car in­to a mud heap where a back­hoe was parked. Run­ning out of the car, he then lay down in front of the parked back­hoe. Sol­diers fol­lowed close­ly and grabbed him.

But Kublals­ingh wres­tled him­self away from his cus­to­di­ans. The sol­diers caught him but he es­caped again and ran to the de­mol­ished site. Two po­lice­men lat­er hand­cuffed him and led him away. None of the oth­er pro­test­ers in­ter­vened. With tears pour­ing down her face, Ramb­harose and Bhag­was­ingh went in­to their wrecked prayer room to med­i­tate.

For the next three hours, de­bris was cart­ed away on Min­istry of Works trucks. Warn­er re­fused to say whether the camp was a se­cu­ri­ty risk, ex­plain­ing that he would make an of­fi­cial state­ment at his of­fice in Port-of-Spain. Ma­haraj said the mis­sion of the army was to re­move the camp. "The role of the De­fence Force is strict­ly based on the in­struc­tions of the min­is­ter," he said.

"We are not go­ing to com­ment on the po­lit­i­cal fac­tors gov­ern­ing this is­sue. We are here to re­move the struc­ture in sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion. "We had one mis­sion here to un­der­take, and it was to re­move the struc­tures." Col An­tho­ny Phillips-Spencer said the army had an oblig­a­tion to sup­port civ­il au­thor­i­ty. "We act in sup­port of that...We are giv­en in­struc­tions, and this mis­sion is be­ing car­ried out with­in the am­bit of prop­er mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion," he said.

"High-val­ue items will be re­triev­able by who­ev­er they be­long to." By 10 am, heavy equip­ment be­long­ing to OAS con­trac­tors moved in­to the site and be­gan clear­ing the way for the high­way con­struc­tion. Leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice David Ab­du­lah, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, Fi­tun pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my and Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, lat­er met with the pro­test­ers. The sol­diers main­tained a pres­ence at the site through­out the day.