Pe­ter Bal­roop

Ch­aguara­mas Le­gal Land Own­ers (CLLO) or­gan­i­sa­tion is plan­ning to throw down the gaunt­let to the State. CLLO mem­bers in­tend to stage a mass in­va­sion and oc­cu­pa­tion of Ch­aguara­mas, from 7 am on Sat­ur­day, Au­gust 22, tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic ar­eas like the he­li­port, Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, the rear of the Ho­tel School, Point Gourde, Scot­land Bay and Mount Pleas­ant in Mac­queripe. Ac­cord­ing to CLLO leader, 72-year-old Au­gustin Noel, they are in­tent on stag­ing a mass demon­stra­tion to re­cov­er lands they have been con­tend­ing were seized il­le­gal­ly from their an­ces­tors back in 1941, when Great Britain leased thou­sands of acres of the penin­su­la to the USA, in ex­change for war­ships to con­tin­ue the war against Adolf Hitler's Ger­many.

"Ch­aguara­mas na­tives will be re­claim­ing their an­ces­tral lands," de­clares a bold poster be­ing dis­trib­uted by Noel and his col­leagues. Some 221 fam­i­lies were dis­placed dur­ing the 1940s, when the penin­su­la was leased to the USA. How­ev­er, the State is promis­ing to throw the full weight of the law against the promised march, leav­ing the prospect of a bat­tle roy­al in Ch­aguara­mas on the morn­ing of Au­gust 22 Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) chair­man Noel Gar­cia warned on Fri­day that the law must be ob­served.

Told of the posters be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed, Gar­cia said: "This is a mat­ter that has been hashed and re­hashed a num­ber of times. "The fact of the mat­ter is it has reached the Privy Coun­cil and the Privy Coun­cil ruled in the Gov­ern­ment's favour. "As far as I am aware, this coun­try is still gov­erned by the rule of law. "The CDA will ap­ply the law in this case, and Mr Noel and com­pa­ny will be well ad­vised to act with­in the law to avoid un­nec­es­sary con­flict." The march back on to the land de­nied them by the Privy Coun­cil in a Jan­u­ary 22, 2002 judg­ment, starts from the Ch­aguara­mas bor­der­line at the Al­coa in­stal­la­tion, the poster in­di­cates.

A two-pronged at­tack is be­ing launched, Noel re­vealed this week, the oth­er chal­lenge be­ing le­gal and led by Con­gress of the Peo­ple deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har. Noel said in the wake of Ra­mad­har ad­dress­ing a CLLO meet­ing at City Hall in Port-of-Spain on Ju­ly 5, he had ac­cept­ed a brief to file an ap­peal against the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment, and had as­sem­bled a team of two more at­tor­neys to re­search the pile of le­gal doc­u­ments that had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed since the CLLO be­gan its so far fu­tile at­tempt to re­claim Ch­aguara­mas from the State and its vest­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive, the CDA.

For­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma, it was learnt, is al­so as­sist­ing the le­gal team to come up with an ar­gu­ment that could con­vince the Privy Coun­cil the 2002 judg­ment de­liv­ered by Lord Mil­lett was flawed, be­cause it was formed with in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion at the time be­fore the Law Lords. It is un­der­stood that a state­ment de­liv­ered in Par­lia­ment in 1958, by the-then Chief Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams, claim­ing that the lease was il­le­gal be­cause it was not reg­is­tered, was not pre­sent­ed in ev­i­dence be­fore the Law Lords, and is be­lieved to be cru­cial to the CLLO's case.

Re­gard­ing the pro­posed march, Noel said CLLO mem­bers ap­pre­ci­at­ed that CDA se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel would re­gard them as tres­passers, but felt they had the le­gal right to en­ter lands their an­ces­tors owned, lands that should have been hand­ed down to them. "They will have to do what­ev­er they want to do at that point in time, but we be­lieve we are on a le­gal foot­ing. "This time the French Cre­oles and land own­ers of African de­scent have band­ed to­geth­er. "The Cabrals own 103 acres where the he­li­port is now sit­u­at­ed, and we in­tend to in­stall a con­tain­er there. That day we are go­ing to mount up our ring stoves and have a mas­sive cook­out in Ch­aguara­mas."