Carisa Lee

Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj be­lieves that ur­ban youth along the East-West cor­ri­dor are tar­get­ing peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent in Aranguez, San Juan, and across the coun­try.

“I say that bold­ly, they are prod­ucts of a failed ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, they are prod­ucts of failed par­ent­ing…the mis­cre­ants of the East-West Cor­ri­dor who feel that what you have be­longs to them…even if the sta­tis­tic say three were killed in Char­lo Vil­lage and one was killed here, they all have the same com­plex­ion, they all come from the same eth­nic group,” he said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence to ad­dress crime in Aranguez yes­ter­day.

He made the claim mere me­ters away from where busi­ness­man Chavelle Ram­jat­tan was mur­dered just over a week ago by ban­dits who were at­tempt­ing to rob him.

“Aranguez has been un­der duress not to­day, it has been grow­ing steadi­ly, a lot of the busi­ness­peo­ple that you see have been held up at their homes…Aranguez is like a ghost town in the night, no­body walks the road,” he said.

He said the crim­i­nals think East In­di­ans have mon­ey be­cause of the size of their hous­es and while he did not have of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics to cor­rob­o­rate his claims, he said the vic­tims usu­al­ly de­scribe their at­tack­ers.

“The crime in Aranguez is against East In­di­an peo­ple be­cause we live in Aranguez, we are the ones be­ing tar­get­ed but the per­pe­tra­tors are not East In­di­an. The ur­ban youth, the mis­cre­ants of the East-West cor­ri­dor, those who have been al­lowed to fall through the cracks of so­ci­ety and emerge post-pu­bes­cent to ter­rorise be­cause they go­ing and look for a lil change to give their moth­er be­cause their moth­er have 14 and 15 chil­dren,” Ma­haraj said.

He added, “... Be­cause if they in Aranguez to­day, what stop­ping them from go­ing El So­cor­ro to­mor­row? ... and if they in Aranguez to­day, what stop­ping them from go­ing Val­sayn to­mor­row?

He al­so does not be­lieve that prison will make a dif­fer­ence.

“We have to call it how we see it…when you lock them up you send them to uni­ver­si­ty, that jail is uni­ver­si­ty to them, where they get to net­work with big­ger crim­i­nal,” he said.

But not every­one liv­ing in Aranguez agreed with Ma­haraj’s as­sess­ment.

Res­i­dent Ab­dul Ha­keem im­me­di­ate­ly chal­lenged the Pun­dit, say­ing his state­ments were un­true and racist.

“You cah say it’s on­ly one set of peo­ple do­ing the crime, be­cause they have peo­ple in­side here who bring­ing in peo­ple and it’s peo­ple like my­self (East In­di­an) who bring­ing in peo­ple here to do the crime. So, when you blam­ing one ur­ban colour for do­ing the crime you talk­ing non­sense, we are not here for that,” Ha­keem said.

Ma­haraj ac­cused Ha­keem of hav­ing an agen­da, but the lat­ter de­nied this.

The Pun­dit said on Sun­day, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds spoke with res­i­dents and not­ed their con­cerns when it comes to crime, but not­ed they had seen any ac­tion since then.

“Not an ex­tra pa­trol…noth­ing has changed in our com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

Oth­er re­li­gious lead­ers present at the event were Pun­dits Satiya Charya Brananand Ram­bachan, Jairam Seer­am and Umadutt Ma­haraj, along with Imams Kaz­im and Im­ti­az Ali.

Pun­dit Ram­bachan, who is at­tached to the El Soc­coro Tem­ple, said they are ready to take up Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s call to get back in­to the com­mu­ni­ties to help guide the youth away from crime.

“This is the on­ly way we will suc­ceed, this is the on­ly way we will tell the new gen­er­a­tion com­ing up that crime, mur­ders, as­sas­si­na­tion is not the way,” he said.

He said he will send a pro­pos­al to the Prime Min­is­ter this week in the hope of meet­ing him and Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

“I want an im­proved fu­ture gen­er­a­tion. I can’t change the gen­er­a­tion of to­day but I can plant the seed and if the Prime Min­is­ter al­lows me, we will make the streets of this coun­try our pul­pits,” he said.

As he wiped tears from his eyes, Pun­dit Ram­bachan placed his hands on the land and said he will not leave T&T and called the high­er sprits to take the wheel.

“To bring our coun­try to a land of love, to bring our coun­try back to a place of peace, to bring our coun­try to a place of un­der­stand­ing,” he cried.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day asked the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice for a break­down of eth­nic­i­ties of vic­tims of se­ri­ous crimes, in­clu­sive of mur­ders, in the San Juan/Barataria and El So­cor­ro Polic­ing Dis­tricts for the last five years. How­ev­er, there was no re­sponse up un­til press time.

Mean­while, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, Mervyn Ed­wards, said he plans to meet with Aranguez res­i­dents soon. He said there will al­so be a walk­a­bout, but af­ter the meet­ing is held.

“I work to part­ner with the peo­ple, as I will be do­ing with the com­mu­ni­ty of Aranguez, El So­cor­ro, San Juan, Mor­vant, San­ta Cruz, Blan­chisseuse and all the dis­tricts,” he said.

How­ev­er, he could not con­firm Pun­dit Ma­haraj’s claim about whether East In­di­ans were be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ed in the Aranguez com­mu­ni­ty and di­rect­ed us to Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis branch.

David Muham­mad:
Ig­no­rance part of prob­lem

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the Pun­dit’s claims yes­ter­day, Na­tion of Is­lam T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Black Agen­da Project head Dr David Muham­mad, said, “Crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go is a mul­ti-lay­ered, mul­ti-faceted web of in­ten­tions and ac­tiv­i­ties on many lev­els. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some as­pects of it re­main large­ly in­vis­i­ble and un­de­tectable, while oth­er as­pects of it are over­ly sen­sa­tion­alised and am­pli­fied. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the black male youth of our so­ci­ety, many who are fight­ing for sur­vival, end up be­ing the pub­lic faces, mas­cots and scape­goats for a sit­u­a­tion that is root­ed in prob­lems that they have no con­trol over.”

He said many peo­ple were la­belling black youth while not try­ing to look for the root caus­es of their woes.

“In our so­ci­ety, there is the un­for­tu­nate ig­nor­ing of the causal fac­tors, in­sti­tu­tion­alised struc­tures of clas­sism and op­pres­sion, in­ef­fec­tive po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and white-col­lar crimes that each have heav­ier im­pacts on our crime cri­sis than the young black boys who are blamed for it. When we hear blame be­ing lev­elled ex­clu­sive­ly to black ur­ban youths in this way, it ex­pos­es a deep ig­no­rance, thought­less­ness and racist at­ti­tude that is part of the prob­lem.”