Derek Achong

Rain and spo­radic in­fight­ing among po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists marred protest ac­tion to ad­dress vi­o­lence against women out­side of Par­lia­ment, yes­ter­day. 

The pro­test­ers, who were an amal­ga­ma­tion of sev­er­al groups, be­gan with uni­fied chants call­ing for leg­isla­tive change but their ac­tiv­i­ty even­tu­al­ly pe­tered out as some groups de­scend­ed in­to shout­ing match­es with each oth­er over their dif­fer­ing philo­soph­i­cal views on how to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. 

The protest be­gan well be­fore mid­day as a hand­ful of pro­test­ers with plac­ards gath­er­ing op­po­site the Aber­crom­by Street en­trance to the Red House. 

They were soon joined by oth­er groups in­clud­ing one large group of ac­tivists, who marched to the lo­ca­tion af­ter gath­er­ing at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, ear­li­er yes­ter­day. 

That group dressed main­ly in black and car­ry­ing plac­ards aimed at gen­der-based vi­o­lence, which was led by busi­ness­man Ger­ald Aboud and Pan Trin­ba­go del­e­gate Gre­go­ry Lind­say, was stopped by a large con­tin­gent of po­lice of­fi­cers, who were po­si­tioned out­side the Red House. 

A news team from Guardian Me­dia was with­in an earshot of both men as the of­fi­cers asked whether they had re­ceived per­mis­sion from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith to host a protest on the streets and block the side-walk. 

Aboud was seen show­ing the of­fi­cer a screen-shot of a text mes­sage ex­change pur­port­ed be­tween him­self and Grif­fith, which he (Aboud) said grant­ed per­mis­sion. 

Police officers use a piece of PVC to corral protesters into Woodford Square, because they did not have permission to protest on the pavement outside the Red House yesterday.

KRISTISN DE SILVA

The of­fi­cer was seen show­ing Aboud a doc­u­ment on his phone, which ap­peared to be an of­fi­cial let­ter from Grif­fith grant­i­ng so­cial ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley per­mis­sion to hold a silent protest af­ter stag­ing a walk sim­i­lar to the one he does an­nu­al­ly on the an­niver­sary of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup. 

The of­fi­cer was then heard ad­vis­ing the group to re­lo­cate in­side Wood­ford Square to avoid block­ing the pave­ment and the busy road­way. 

While many com­plied, Aboud and Lind­say re­mained out­side as they shout­ed chants and main­tained that they were ex­er­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of speech in a pub­lic place. 

Aboud was ar­rest­ed first and Lind­say was heard chal­leng­ing the of­fi­cers to do the same to him. 

“If you ar­rest him, you have to ar­rest me,” Lind­say was heard say­ing be­fore the po­lice of­fi­cers gra­cious­ly grant­ed his re­quest. 

Both men, who were trans­port­ed to Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion, were even­tu­al­ly re­leased with­out be­ing charged and re­joined the protest. 

In con­trast to be­fore, Aboud and Lind­say were no­table de­mure and on­ly lift­ed their voic­es when their in­ter­view with me­dia per­son­nel was briefly in­ter­viewed by ac­tivist Garth Christo­pher and a group of oth­er vo­cal ac­tivists. 

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, both Aboud and Lind­say said that they held no grudges against the po­lice, who treat­ed them well dur­ing their brief de­ten­tion. 

“They (the po­lice) were just do­ing their job just try­ing to make sure things do not get out of con­trol,” Aboud said. 

Gregory Lindsay is arrested during the protest outside the Red House yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Both men said they did not want their ar­rest to tar­nish the im­age of the move­ment they were ad­vo­cat­ing for. 

“To­day I paid the work­ers on my farm and told my moth­er that I am com­ing down here and am pre­pared to get locked up be­cause there is some­thing called good trou­ble,” Lind­say said. 

“To­day trav­el­ling for the brief mo­ment in the back of that po­lice car, I had a lit­tle inkling of what that la­dy (Bharatt) went through,” Lind­say added. 

“The ju­di­cial sys­tem has failed. If it was work­ing, An­drea would be alive to­day. This can­not be a democ­ra­cy if there is no law,” Aboud said, be­fore be­ing re­peat­ed­ly in­ter­rupt­ed. 

In a brief in­ter­view, teacher Seema Suraj, who or­gan­ised a mo­tor­cade last week­end and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the march to Wood­ford Square, claimed that the demon­stra­tion was hi­jacked by po­lit­i­cal pro­test­ers. 

“When we got here our in­ten­tion was not to at­tack any par­tic­u­lar par­ty. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, when we got here it was very po­lit­i­cal and many ac­tivists left,” Suraj said. 

“It is not about pol­i­tics. It is about change and jus­tice for all,” Suraj said. 

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh was al­so present at the demon­stra­tion and used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to present Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans en­ter­ing the Red House for yes­ter­day’s de­bate with a copy of a sev­en-point plan to re­form the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. 

While many in at­ten­dance en­dured pe­ri­od­ic rain­fall and shel­tered un­der the large trees in Wood­ford Square, most dis­persed be­fore 4 pm.

A demonstrator draped in a national flag participates in the protest outside the Red House yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH