Ke­jan Haynes

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes has joined the call for a per­ma­nent an­nu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.

She is hop­ing that it comes in the form of a mu­se­um with au­dio vi­su­al and his­tor­i­cal­ly ac­cu­rate dis­plays of the events.

She made the sug­ges­tion at the pre­miere of the TTPS’ doc­u­men­tary “Code 727,” which, for the first time, told the sto­ry of the in­sur­rec­tion from the point of view of the of­fi­cers who lived through the or­deal in and around the Red House in Port-of-Spain.

“This needs to be done soon­er rather than lat­er, while many of the wit­ness­es are still alive and in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry re­mains. Such an un­der­tak­ing, of course, will not come cheap, but it will be worth it,” Weekes said.

The Pres­i­dent said the idea came to her not just be­cause of the film, which she called time­ly, be­cause of the date of the pre­miere, or be­cause it came 32 years af­ter the events, but be­cause of a trip she once made to a holo­caust mu­se­um in Ger­many.

She said she was moved by what she saw there al­though she was far re­moved from the sit­u­a­tion. She said it should be the same for peo­ple in T&T.

“For those lo­cals and vis­i­tors alike, who have no frame of ref­er­ence, there is no rea­son that we can­not erect a mu­se­um qual­i­ty dis­play of art­work, im­ages and ac­cu­rate ver­i­fied his­tor­i­cal in­for­ma­tion that pro­vides the front and un­fil­tered of the af­fair with­out ro­man­ti­cis­ing or min­imis­ing the facts,’” she said.

The Pres­i­dent lament­ed the fact that nowa­days, “many triv­i­alise or min­imise the im­pact of those six dread­ful days.”

She be­lieves the at­tempt­ed coup for­ev­er changed the coun­try, and not for the bet­ter, say­ing that vi­o­lent crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­der, had tak­en off since.

As she read the names of the nine iden­ti­fied cit­i­zens who died that day—four of whom were po­lice of­fi­cers—she said it was “a cry­ing shame that those who lost their loved ones in this brazen as­sault on democ­ra­cy should feel that they too have been for­got­ten.”

She added that 15 of the vic­tims re­main name­less and called it “a na­tion­al dis­grace.”

The TTPS ho­n­oured the of­fi­cers who were di­rect­ly in­volved in the events of 1990 in a gala cer­e­mo­ny im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the movie’s pre­miere. Many of the of­fi­cers ap­peared in the doc­u­men­tary.

The broth­er of PC Solomon McLeod, who was just 23 when he died in the Red House, was greet­ed with a stand­ing ova­tion as he re­ceived the fi­nal award on be­half of his fall­en sib­ling.

Code 727 (727 rep­re­sent­ing Ju­ly 27) was pro­duced en­tire­ly by the TTPS.

It was di­rect­ed by act­ing Cpl An­to­nio Di­az and pro­duced by Se­nior Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer Daniel­la John­son.

John­son told GML it took sev­en months to pro­duce the film.

She said, “We would have heard from the De­fence force, from the par­lia­ment, the me­dia, so this is our op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell the po­lice side of the sto­ry.”

She said get­ting the in­ter­views weren’t al­ways easy, since it re­quired ask­ing of­fi­cers to re­live the trau­ma again.

“A lot of peo­ple were break­ing down and cry­ing dur­ing the in­ter­views,” John­son said.

She ex­tend­ed thanks to the 27 of­fi­cers and for­mer of­fi­cers who were part of the film.