The Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union (TI­WU) has added its voice to those con­demn­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment, over the han­dling of a protest demon­stra­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, on Sun­day 16th Jan­u­ary 2022.

De­scrib­ing the ac­tion as “de­spi­ca­ble” in an of­fi­cial state­ment, TI­WU ar­gues that the coun­try’s democ­ra­cy is at risk if ri­ot po­lice are brought out to deal with “peace­ful demon­stra­tors”.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment is­sued by the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union (TI­WU) on the mat­ter…

Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (ITPS) and by ex­ten­sion the Gov­ern­ment, demon­strat­ed on Sun­day Jan­u­ary 16th  2022, at a peace­ful march held at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. What was sup­posed to be a peace­ful demon­stra­tion with fam­i­lies, the na­tion's gov­ern­ment turned it in­to a ri­ot and seem­ing­ly thought it best to bring out a ri­ot squad. The TTPS was out­fit­ted with ri­ot gear, armed with large guns and tear gas. Is that the mes­sage we want to send out to the world? That a peace­ful demon­stra­tion with fam­i­lies in a sa­van­nah can cause the gov­ern­ment to use the re­sources of the ITPS to in­still fear to bring the na­tion in­to sub­mis­sion?

Look­ing at this be­hav­iour through the eyes of the world, could be de­fined as the most em­bar­rass­ing per­for­mance of an ed­u­cat­ed bunch of peo­ple. This was not an ex­pec­ta­tion of those with three de­grees and a long list of qual­i­fi­ca­tion. What hap­pened to the rights of cit­i­zens in this coun­try? Are we on the in­cep­tion of dic­ta­tor­ship? Com­rades and cit­i­zens, this ac­tion met­ed out to peace­ful cit­i­zens by the gov­ern­ment is un­ac­cept­able. Es­pe­cial­ly since their on­ly cry was on­ly to seek an­swers and be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard in the best in­ter­est of all.

Nonethe­less, TI­WU stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our mem­bers who par­tic­i­pat­ed at the peace­ful demon­stra­tion in de­fence of their rights for bread and jus­tice and the right to pri­va­cy and re­fusal on health is­sue that is not in the best in­ter­est of one as an in­di­vid­ual. Fur­ther­more, TI­WU con­demns the ar­rest and abuse of one of our mem­bers, who stood with his com­rades and peace­ful­ly demon­strat­ed his non- com­pli­ance to gov­ern­ment's ut­ter­ances to fur­lough un­vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers on Mon­day Jan­u­ary 17th, 2022. The ex­e­cu­tion of these state­ments can cause grave hard­ships on fam­i­lies notwith­stand­ing the ef­fects on their men­tal, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal health.

The Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go to­geth­er with the TTPS should apol­o­gise to these in­no­cent cit­i­zens for their cal­lous­ness and bla­tant dis­re­gard to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right of the Work­ing Class in this na­tion. We refuse to al­low the pow­ers that be, to dis­miss and vi­o­lent­ly take bread from the mouths of our broth­ers and sis­ters by the stroke of a pen. WE WLL NOT sit idly by and watch this dis­play of au­to­crat­ic lead­er­ship forced up­on a coun­try whose democ­ra­cy stands on the blood, sweat and tears of those who fought for our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights.