Sascha Wil­son

Po­lice were called to the Cunu­pia dor­mi­to­ry of the Bei­jing Li­u­jing em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter a group of po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists were barred from en­ter­ing the com­pound to dis­trib­ute food. The pres­ence of the guards and their ac­tions, evoked con­cerns that the Chi­nese em­ploy­ees were be­ing held in prison-like con­di­tions. How­ev­er the se­cu­ri­ty guards de­nied these al­le­ga­tions. The con­cerns were raised by Sunil Ramjits­ingh, an of­fi­cial at Jack Warn­er's Ch­agua­nas West Con­stituen­cy Of­fice, who was among the group who vis­it­ed the camp, off Cha­tee Road, Cunu­pia. He said the group com­prised ac­tivists from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and Con­gress of the Peo­ple.

Ramjits­ingh said: "When we got there, the gate was locked. The work­ers saw us and were call­ing us. They were locked in­side. There were com­pa­ny of­fi­cials in­side and they would not let the Chi­nese come out­side. "You could see the pan­ic and duress on their faces. There was a high stench of urine and fae­ces em­a­nat­ing from the camp." He said mem­bers of the me­dia were al­so blocked from en­ter­ing. Ramjits­ingh said they had to un­pack the food stuff and throw it over the wall for them to get it. He said one labour­er who could speak a lit­tle Eng­lish asked for a doc­tor. "It look like some­one was sick and need­ed med­ical at­ten­tion." Ramjits­ingh said he even­tu­al­ly called the po­lice. "The po­lice came and went in­side, but be­cause of the lan­guage bar­ri­er, it was dif­fi­cult for them to un­der­stand. But the of­fi­cers said they will look in­to the sit­u­a­tion."

"My own con­cern is that it seems the work­ers there have been im­pris­oned. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty should look in­to this." The labour­ers have been mak­ing head­lines since they protest­ed on Tues­day be­cause they were not be­ing paid. Since then, con­cerns have been raised about the un­san­i­tary con­di­tions at the camp. When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed, two Chi­nese were walk­ing freely out of the camp. An­oth­er labour­er was gath­er­ing crops near the wall out­side the camp to cook. Un­able to speak eng­lish, one of them wrote with a stone on the wall "$23,000," and point­ed to all of them.

Se­cu­ri­ty de­nies al­le­ga­tions

One of the se­cu­ri­ty guards, who re­fused to di­vulge his name or the name of his se­cu­ri­ty firm, de­nied that the chi­nese were be­ing held hostage. "That is to­tal­ly in­cor­rect. We are here to make sure no one from the pub­lic comes in with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion, but the Chi­nese are free to come and go." He added: "All they want is their mon­ey and they want to go home."