SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Guardian Me­dia has been tar­get­ed by the man who is call­ing him­self 'The Re­sis­tance' for its stance on ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The com­pa­ny's head of­fice in Port-of-Spain was van­dalised in the ear­ly hours of Sun­day morn­ing by the man.

Ac­cord­ing to a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer on du­ty at the time, around 3 am on Sun­day, the man be­gan spray paint­ing on the glass panes at the front of the build­ing on St Vin­cent Street. The man al­so broke one of the glass panes. No one was in­jured dur­ing the in­ci­dent. Po­lice were called in but the man was not held.

The spray-paint­ed mes­sages said, “TT­UP NA­TION THE RE­SIS­TANCE ON BE­HALF OF T&T WE SAY NO LOCK­DOWN NO MANDA­TO­RY MASK WEAR­ING COVID NUH RE­AL.”

Guardian Me­dia has been do­ing its part to ed­u­cate the pub­lic with pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns as well as the dai­ly pub­li­ca­tion of in­for­ma­tion on how to help curb the spread of the virus.

Guardian Me­dia al­so re­ceived re­ports that sim­i­lar mes­sages were spray-paint­ed on the walls of build­ings hous­ing First Cit­i­zens and Sco­tia­bank, the clock out­side Nicholas Tow­ers, the bmo­bile out­let and even the Cipari­ni Stat­ue on In­de­pen­dence Square in down­town Port-of-Spain.

On Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced a 28-day lock­down be­gin­ning on to­day (Au­gust 17) re­strict­ing pub­lic ac­cess to rivers and beach­es, the clo­sure of cin­e­mas, mak­ing mask-wear­ing manda­to­ry, re­duc­ing pub­lic gath­er­ings to five peo­ple, clos­ing schools for the rest of the year and re­strict­ing bars and food out­lets from of­fer­ing dine-in ser­vices.

The mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed in an ef­fort to curb the spread of the virus, which ac­count­ed for the death of an 11th per­son on Sun­day.

Eight days ago, on Au­gust 8, ‘The Re­sis­tance’ al­so set fire to the Min­istry of Health build­ing on Park Street, Port-of-Spain, af­ter leav­ing sim­i­lar mes­sages about the COVID-19 virus. Fire of­fi­cers took hours to con­tain the fire, which was start­ed af­ter a flam­ma­ble ob­ject was thrown in­to the low­est floor of the build­ing. That at­tack al­so took place in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, as have been oth­er cas­es of van­dal­ism by The Re­sis­tance in re­cent weeks. How­ev­er, there have been no ar­rests to date.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said the probe was in the hands of DCP Jayson Forde. At­tempts to con­tact Forde have been un­suc­cess­ful thus far.

In­for­ma­tion on this sto­ry will be up­dat­ed as more in­for­ma­tion comes in.