Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Mar­tin George has warned that while the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is pro­mot­ing its stand your ground pro­pos­al, ef­forts must be made to en­sure there are no racial un­der­tones

How­ev­er, for­mer UNC MP Dr Fuad Khan has called for snipers to be placed in busi­ness places to shoot those who come to steal and kill and says hu­man rights should not ap­ply when deal­ing with gangs.

In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion head, Pun­dit Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo, al­so weighed in, sup­port­ing the UNC’s con­cept.

They and sev­er­al oth­ers com­ment­ed yes­ter­day on UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s “light em up” and “load the ‘mat­ic’” calls at UNC meet­ings ear­li­er this week. Ask­ing what peo­ple would do if a crim­i­nal in­vades their home, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so point­ed to Ex­o­dus, Chap­ter 22 Verse 2 from the Bible to jus­ti­fy her po­si­tion.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, George said one had to bear in mind how the stand your ground law is ap­plied in the US. He cit­ed the case of 17-year-old African Amer­i­can Flori­da res­i­dent Trayvon Mar­tin, who was killed while hold­ing a can­dy bar. George Zim­mer­man, who shot Mar­tin, thought it was a gun and that he was un­der threat.

At­tor­ney George said one could not es­cape the un­der­ly­ing racial sub-text and con­text of that sce­nario, where in a white neigh­bour­hood the youth was seen as a threat.

George said while all in T&T were con­cerned and some­times pan­icked about ris­ing crime, the coun­try has to en­sure that even in the prop­a­ga­tion of the stand your ground law, there are no racial un­der­tones. He al­so point­ed to the re­cent state­ment by a re­li­gious leader, who made a sweep­ing state­ment racial­ly pro­fil­ing some per­pe­tra­tors of crime.

George said while Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­tanced her­self from that, she should make it clear there is no hint of any racial un­der­tone in her stand your ground pro­pos­al so that peo­ple could fo­cus prop­er­ly on its im­pact on crime.

He added that it was quite a touchy and in­ter­est­ing is­sue and one had to bal­ance the rights of home­own­ers against the surg­ing crime wave.

George said there is a need for more clar­i­ty and ma­ture re­spect­ful dis­cus­sion on the top­ic to elu­ci­date the ori­gins and think­ing be­hind it.

“Be­cause it can open up a can of worms if we’re not care­ful with it, and cre­ate more prob­lems than so­lu­tions,” he said.

Khan - No hu­man rights

for crim­i­nals

Mean­while, for­mer min­is­ter and MP Dr Fuad Khan said the UNC leader un­der­stood the frus­tra­tion be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by cit­i­zens across the coun­try.

“Kam­la’s just echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of a scared, fed-up pop­u­la­tion. The time has come for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to pro­tect them­selves from the num­ber of dead­ly crim­i­nals who be­lieve we’re help­less. Peo­ple are fed-up with an in­com­pe­tent po­lice force and a lack of de­tec­tion of stolen cars and home in­vaders,” Khan said.

He added, “Gov­ern­ment heads are im­po­tent in this. It wouldn’t have reached here if not for their in­abil­i­ty to de­tect and pe­nalise dis­gust­ing crim­i­nals. The con­cept of ex­ces­sive force be­ing per­pet­u­at­ed by se­nior po­lice em­bold­ens crim­i­nals who be­lieve law en­force­ment and Gov­ern­ment are on their side ...so too the con­cept of hu­man rights should not be al­lowed to be prac­ticed when deal­ing with crim­i­nal gangs.”

IRO head Pun­dit Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo ques­tioned if Per­sad-Bisses­sar had of­fered any al­ter­na­tive to stand your ground. But he said home in­va­sions are very ram­pant and if peo­ple en­tered his premis­es, he would em­ploy the stand your ground con­cept.

”You can­not al­low peo­ple to run ram­pant on your premis­es,” he said.

Sir­joo said Hin­du scrip­ture stat­ed that if there was a neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion and one had to go to the ex­treme to cor­rect it, that is done.

But Pres­by­ter­ian Church com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Michael Coop­er-Ochiengh said the church was keep­ing a dis­tance from the com­ments.

“We’re very aware it’s elec­tion sea­son and this isn’t re­al­ly some­thing the church would want to com­ment on be­cause of how it might be per­ceived. There’s the Old Tes­ta­ment and New Tes­ta­ment, which says we do all in love - and not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” he said.

Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Alexan­der mean­while ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of seek­ing at­ten­tion with her com­ments.

“I’m try­ing to not in­volve my­self in the des­per­a­tion cir­cus the Op­po­si­tion band­wag­on has be­come. Kam­la is a lawyer and she knows all com­mon civ­il law is pred­i­cat­ed on the right to own and de­fend prop­er­ty. This is them be­ing dra­mat­ic for at­ten­tion,” Alexan­der said.

“What they’re not an­swer­ing is how all these il­le­gal guns come to be in the coun­try in the first place. Both PNM and UNC de­lib­er­ate­ly re­fused to se­cure the bor­ders and we must make them an­swer for that.”