Rose­marie Sant

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don is urg­ing cit­i­zens to “keep your eyes open” in light of the re­port­ed se­cu­ri­ty threat un­cov­ered by the se­cu­ri­ty forces and which has led to the de­ten­tion of sev­en peo­ple.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day af­ter he de­liv­ered the Homi­ly at the St Paul’s Ro­man Catholic Church in Cou­va The Arch­bish­op ap­pealed to cit­i­zens if they “see any­thing that is sus­pi­cious you need to re­port it and re­port it quick­ly. Don’t say well that is not my busi­ness. Se­cu­ri­ty is the busi­ness of every cit­i­zen and the po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty forces can on­ly help us if we are con­scious and if we are tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for se­cu­ri­ty in our coun­try,” he said.

On Thurs­day, Se­cu­ri­ty forces raid­ed sev­er­al homes and mosques in El So­cor­ro and Mo­hammedville fol­low­ing weeks of in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Ini­tial­ly four peo­ple in­clud­ing Tariq Mo­hammed, the son of ra­dio an­nounc­er Shamoon Mo­hammed, was ar­rest­ed. Sub­se­quent­ly, three oth­ers were ar­rest­ed.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams told the me­dia on Sat­ur­day that the se­cu­ri­ty threat is still re­al.

Yes­ter­day, Gor­don lament­ed the grow­ing in­volve­ment of young peo­ple in crime, say­ing many of the young men who get in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty are “dis­con­nect­ed from the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“They are dis­con­nect­ed from their fa­thers. They are dis­con­nect­ed from the com­mu­ni­ty,” he al­so said.

Gor­don said it is be­cause of this they join in­to groups “where they ex­pe­ri­ence love, care, any kind of com­mu­ni­ty fel­low­ship and be­cause of that they go down the wrong di­rec­tion.”

The Arch­bish­op said there is an ur­gent need to re­con­nect “es­pe­cial­ly the young men to their fa­thers to the com­mu­ni­ty, to el­ders in the com­mu­ni­ty, to pos­i­tive pro­grammes, to the church, to all the pos­i­tive in­sti­tu­tions to help them go in the right di­rec­tion.”

Gor­don not­ed that T&T “has al­ways man­aged to have a safe Car­ni­val,” but he ex­pressed con­cern that there is a “creep­ing hea­thenism in the coun­try.”

He ex­plained that “hea­thenism is the phi­los­o­phy where you max­imise plea­sure, min­imise the pain and every plea­sure you can do and there is no moral re­straint what­so­ev­er.”

While Car­ni­val is an “in­cred­i­ble fes­tiv­i­ty” for the coun­try, filled with “beau­ty, cre­ativ­i­ty ,joy, and bless­ings and the Car­ni­val in it­self is such an icon in it­self of who we are as a cre­ative peo­ple, un­for­tu­nate­ly we have had some be­hav­iour creep­ing in­to the Car­ni­val over the years and that be­hav­iour has be­come chal­leng­ing,” Gor­don told parish­ioners.

He urged cit­i­zens as they en­joy the Car­ni­val to “have great fun and en­joy the fes­ti­val,” but in do­ing so “ex­er­cise moral re­straint” that we ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing with.”