Yvonne Ba­boolal

The Ja­maat al Mus­limeen's at­tempt­ed over­throw of the Gov­ern­ment in 1990 was a spon­ta­neous act of re­venge and rage and they had no plan when they stormed the Par­lia­ment. Killing par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and dis­tress­ing the whole coun­try was the Ja­maat's way of tak­ing re­venge for per­ceived in­jus­tices done to the group.

This view was ex­pressed by so­cial sci­en­tist Prof Ramesh De­osaran, as he gave ev­i­dence yes­ter­day in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Ju­ly 27, 1990 up­ris­ing. De­osaran is the au­thor of a book on the in­sur­rec­tion which he wrote in 1993-A So­ci­ety Un­der Siege, A Study of Po­lit­i­cal Con­fu­sion and Le­gal Mys­ti­cism.

The book has an in­ter­view he did with in­sur­rec­tion and Ja­maat leader, Yasin Abu Bakr. De­osaran dis­pelled the gen­er­al con­sen­sus by pre­vi­ous wit­ness­es that the Mus­limeen had been prepar­ing for the coup d'etat sev­er­al years be­fore the event. "They had no plan. It was very spon­ta­neous. It was more an act of seek­ing re­venge, and rage.

"Look­ing at it now, it's al­most ir­ra­tional," he said. De­osaran said if the in­sur­rec­tion was "arranged" af­ter the po­lice and army set up a base near the Ja­maat's com­pound at 1 Mu­cu­rapo Road, one month be­fore, that would not be a rev­o­lu­tion. He said the Ja­maat would have had a par­al­lel army in place, a pres­i­dent-in-wait­ing and oth­ers to hold state of­fices, which they did not have.

"They went in there (Par­lia­ment) with­out a plan and it boomeranged in the way it did," he added. De­osaran said the Mus­limeen had no plan be­yond the use of guns and the tak­ing over of Trinidad & To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT), the coun­try's lone tele­vi­sion sta­tion at the time, Trinidad Broad­cast­ing Co, a ra­dio sta­tion, and Par­lia­ment.

He said one can ar­gue that the Ja­maat's stock­pil­ing of arms and am­mu­ni­tion was not to at­tack the Gov­ern­ment, but to stave off an at­tack from the po­lice. He elicit­ed an ap­par­ent re­sponse of sur­prise from com­mis­sion chair­man, Sir David Sim­mons, who in­formed De­osaran that an im­pec­ca­ble source, via doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence, said since Feb­ru­ary 1987, Bakr was dis­sat­is­fied with the NAR gov­ern­ment.

Sim­mons said for as­sist­ing the NAR in the 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion, Bakr was promised a sen­a­to­r­i­al ap­point­ment, the set­tle­ment of the Ja­maat's land is­sue, fund­ing for re­li­gious projects and con­tracts to op­er­ate can­teens. By 1990, none of those promis­es were ful­filled.

De­osaran said, in his mind, the at­tempt­ed coup had its gen­e­sis in the Ja­maat' s land is­sue. He blamed suc­ces­sive po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions for "per­pet­u­at­ing the dis­pute" by not deal­ing with it res­olute­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly. He said the Ja­maat oc­cu­pied the por­tion of state land at Mu­cu­rapo in 1983 which was giv­en to the Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild in 1969.

He added that the con­struc­tion and ex­pan­sion of build­ings on the land led to the fear that the Ja­maat was build­ing an em­pire and a po­lice and army base was set up (by the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion gov­ern­ment) near the com­pound to pre­vent fur­ther en­croach­ing on state land.

De­osaran said Bakr filed a mo­tion in court seek­ing to have the army/po­lice unit re­moved. The court's de­lay in hear­ing the mat­ter "dis­turbed Bakr quite a lot," De­osaran said. In the mean­time, law en­force­ment seemed to be mov­ing in­to ac­tion against him, he added.

The pro­fes­sor was al­so very cau­tious about at­tribut­ing blame to the Ja­maat up­ris­ing for the sub­se­quent in­crease in crime in the coun­try. He said it was the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty, the "first cousin of cor­rup­tion," from pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions that caused the in­crease in crime.

He was not sure, ei­ther, that when Bakr an­nounced on TTT short­ly af­ter the in­sur­rec­tion that there should be no loot­ing that it was a code to cit­i­zens to start loot­ing. Loot­ing has been shown to be a re­sult of crowd be­hav­iour, he said. Un­der­ground norms of be­hav­iour, like squat­ting, for in­stance, are en­cour­aged by po­lit­i­cal con­fu­sion, he added.

He said one set of politi­cians would dis­ap­prove of it while an­oth­er would in­ter­vene in ap­proval. De­osaran said what was need­ed was a new breed of politi­cians who would not use de­viant el­e­ments in so­ci­ety for po­lit­i­cal gain. He said if so­ci­ety had to rise to a high­er lev­el of civil­i­sa­tion, politi­cians need­ed to make a brave ef­fort to re­sist cor­rup­tion and face the fire they would come un­der.

"What you have de­scribed for us there is a Her­culean, if not utopi­an, task," com­mis­sion lead coun­sel Avory Sinanan said.