RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Umar Ab­dul­lah—who was charged in con­nec­tion with Sun­day's protest demon­stra­tion 'Push Back Two' at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain—is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court on Wednes­day Feb­ru­ary 16th.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Ab­dul­lah was charged for lead­ing a march around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah with­out per­mis­sion from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

He was among 12 de­tained by po­lice of­fi­cers but the on­ly one charged.  The eleven oth­ers have been re­leased pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a post on the First Wave Move­ment’s Face­book page, it al­leged that Ab­dul­lah was be­ing:

"…false­ly charged by po­lice for stand­ing up for the rights of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go on Sun­day 16th Jan­u­ary 2022."

The post con­tin­ued: "The po­lice, who have a his­to­ry of false ac­cu­sa­tions, are al­leg­ing that Bro. Umar Ab­dul­lah in­cit­ed vi­o­lence, when in fact it was the po­lice that was meet­ing out vi­o­lence to­wards the peo­ple of Trinidad & To­ba­go.”

“Bro. Umar will how­ev­er fight this mat­ter and has no re­grets for tak­ing a stand for the peo­ple of Trinidad & To­ba­go," the post added.

The health walk “Push Back Two” at­tract­ed hun­dreds of peo­ple—in­clud­ing chil­dren. It came to an abrupt end af­ter po­lice used tear gas to dis­perse the crowd.

The po­lice al­leged that par­tic­i­pants of the walk be­gan act­ing er­rat­i­cal­ly and hurled mis­siles at armed law­men who were forced to throw can­is­ters of tear gas to dis­perse the un­ruly crowd.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Sun­day, 12 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and many oth­ers, in­clud­ing chil­dren, were left nurs­ing in­juries.

In the first Push Back event on 30th No­vem­ber 2021, some 35 peo­ple were de­tained for 16 hours and charged for breach­ing the pub­lic health or­di­nance, specif­i­cal­ly gath­er­ing in groups of more than ten.