Geisha Kow­lessar

The me­dia in T&T could be a voice for change but in­stead they make pornog­ra­phy out of crime, says British High Com­mis­sion­er Arthur Snell.Snell, a mem­ber of the Ro­tary Club, was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the club's lun­cheon at Good­will In­dus­tries, Fitz Black­man Dri­ve, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.Fo­cus­ing on the top­ic, Tak­ing Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, Snell al­so ze­roed in on the is­sue of child­hood.

He re­ferred to nine-year-old Jadel Hold­er, who was mur­dered with his broth­er, Ja­mal Brath­waite, 15, at their home at Co­conut Dri­ve, Mor­vant, on Sun­day.Hold­er and Brath­waite were made to lie down and shot in the head at point-blank range.Snell said: "What does it mean to be a nine-year-old boy? "That's a tran­si­tion­al age. You are a lit­tle child but you are now be­com­ing aware of the adult world. Maybe you are just dis­cov­er­ing that your par­ents are not al­ways right.

"Some­times you ask them a ques­tion and they don't have an an­swer. The nine-year-old boys that I know still like a re­al­ly cool toy that does some­thing clever." Be­fore shock, out­rage and hor­ror could be ex­pressed over the in­ci­dent, he said, it was im­por­tant to note how it was re­port­ed.He quot­ed me­dia re­ports in which peo­ple who were in­ter­viewed short­ly af­ter the mur­ders said soon­er or lat­er they were bound to hap­pen.One neigh­bour re­port­ed the boys kept bad com­pa­ny while an­oth­er de­scribed Hold­er and Brath­waite as "ter­rors."

"So the mes­sage here is pret­ty sim­ply, 'Yes, it is sad but it was their fault. It's not our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty...' Blame the kids, blame the moth­er, blame the ab­sent fa­ther and if that fails, blame the po­lice. "De­mand they take tougher ac­tion, ar­rest more peo­ple. Don't wor­ry there is no ev­i­dence, this has nev­er worked–just do it again. It's not our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty," Snell said.

Say­ing tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was some­thing peo­ple were not very keen on, Snell said it was his be­lief that Hold­er's mur­der was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of every­one, in­clud­ing Ro­tar­i­ans and oth­er cit­i­zens."It's too easy. It's too con­ve­nient to say that these boys got in­to bad com­pa­ny."I want to know what's hap­pened to a so­ci­ety where a small child who gets in­to bad com­pa­ny ends up shot in the back of the head. So who's tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that?" Snell asked.

He al­so re­ferred to an in­stance in which a dai­ly news­pa­per pub­lished a front-page pho­to of a man's sev­ered head on a ta­ble.On what im­pact this could have had on young chil­dren. Snell said his daugh­ter, who was five at the time, was up­set by the pho­to."Per­haps Jadel Hold­er saw that pic­ture and per­haps it taught him to val­ue hu­man life a lit­tle less. How many oth­er chil­dren saw that im­age? What is the im­pact of this on young minds? he asked.

He added: "I am not ques­tion­ing the sanc­ti­ty of free­dom of speech. I am ques­tion­ing the san­i­ty of the ed­i­tors that de­cide to put these im­ages on the front pages."There is a very sim­ple word that de­scribes de­grad­ing, ex­ploita­tive, sen­sa­tion­al­ist vul­gar­i­ty in the pur­suit of com­mer­cial gain. That word is pornog­ra­phy," Snell added.Snell then turned his at­ten­tion to those whom he termed his "own peo­ple"– diplo­mats.

He said: "We come and spend a few years here. We have our lit­tle van­i­ty projects. We com­pete be­tween the dif­fer­ent em­bassies... who has got the best me­dia strate­gies, who has the fan­ci­est par­ty."We in­hab­it a lit­tle ex­clu­sive world of self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry cir­cu­lar­i­ty. We oc­ca­sion­al­ly make care­ful­ly planned for­ays in­to pre-sani­tised so-called 'hotspots' be­fore we re­treat be­hind the high wall of our em­bassies.

"And how many of us diplo­mats can hon­est­ly say we have done any­thing to change the world that Jadel Hold­er was born in­to?" Snell asked.He said it was far eas­i­er to be­moan the state of the na­tion at din­ner par­ties and then sim­ply move on.

No es­cape for politi­cians

On politi­cians, Snell asked what ex­am­ple they were set­ting and to what ex­tent re­spon­si­bil­i­ty res­onat­ed with the po­lit­i­cal class."In the West­min­ster Par­lia­ment, we used to talk of po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions be­ing made be­hind closed doors in smoke-filled rooms. In this coun­try it seems that a dif­fer­ent sort of ac­tiv­i­ty goes on in smoke-filled rooms," Snell said.He said he had lived in T&T for just over three years and had de­vot­ed a con­sid­er­able amount of time un­der­stand­ing the pol­i­tics.

"But I am gen­uine­ly un­able to dis­cern any dis­tinc­tive pol­i­cy of any ma­jor po­lit­i­cal group­ing in this coun­try be­yond, 'When we are in pow­er we look af­ter our peo­ple.' As far as I can tell that seems high on the man­i­festo," Snell said.