Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor- Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is ques­tion­ing whether the Home In­va­sion bill would ex­tend pro­tec­tion to squat­ters, ask­ing if in­di­vid­u­als who have no le­gal claim to land they oc­cu­py would still be en­ti­tled to de­fend them­selves against in­trud­ers.

As the de­bate on the “Stand Your Ground” leg­is­la­tion moved to the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi ques­tioned whether the pro­posed law would ap­ply equal­ly to all cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing squat­ters.

He asked, “The de­bate here is re­al­ly, where can I ex­er­cise this right that is be­ing giv­en to me, the so-called right to not re­treat, the right to use force, in­clud­ing dead­ly force, in de­fen­sive ac­tion.

“Where can I do this? Whose ground are we talk­ing about? Who has ground? That’s the most im­por­tant pre­lim­i­nary is­sue for us to look at.”

Al-Rawi said while he has no is­sue with the de­f­i­n­i­tion of a dwelling house in the bill, an is­sue aris­es with how an “oc­cu­pant” is de­fined.

“An oc­cu­pant means, lis­ten to this, a per­son in law­ful pos­ses­sion of a dwelling house. Let me re­peat that, in law­ful pos­ses­sion of a dwelling house,” Al-Rawi un­der­scored.

He added, “To get the right to say that some­body has tres­passed in your dwelling house, you must have law­ful pos­ses­sion. To kill some­body, to threat­en to deal with them, in stand­ing your ground, you must first of all be in law­ful pos­ses­sion.”

Al-Rawi said the right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment must be fac­tored in­to the de­bate on the Home In­va­sion bill.

“In Trinidad and To­ba­go, 230,000 peo­ple are squat­ting and have been and are not in law­ful pos­ses­sion be­cause they are squat­ters in ad­verse pos­ses­sion to the state land or pri­vate land. They have fam­i­lies. Do they de­serve the right to stand their ground too?” the sen­a­tor asked.

The Home In­va­sion bill crim­i­nalis­es home in­va­sion and seeks to em­pow­er oc­cu­pants of homes to law­ful­ly de­fend them­selves, oth­ers and their prop­er­ty.

If the bill be­comes law, oc­cu­pants will have no du­ty to re­treat when con­front­ed by a home in­vad­er and may use or threat­en to use de­fen­sive force to pro­tect them­selves, oth­ers or prop­er­ty.

Un­der the pro­posed bill, of­fend­ers face se­vere penal­ties de­pend­ing on the na­ture of the crime.

A stan­dard of­fence car­ries a fine of $500, 000 and a prison sen­tence of up to 20 years.

How­ev­er, if the crime is deemed ag­gra­vat­ed, such as be­ing com­mit­ted as part of a gang, an or­gan­ised crim­i­nal en­ter­prise or in the pres­ence of vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als like chil­dren, the el­der­ly or per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, the penal­ties in­crease to a fine of $750, 000 and 25 years’ im­pris­on­ment.

In cas­es where a death oc­curs dur­ing the in­va­sion, the of­fend­er may al­so be charged with mur­der, even if there was no in­tent to kill.