Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and Toba­go na­tion­als liv­ing in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE) ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that apart from the widen­ing Gulf con­flict in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States, Is­rael and Iran, they were al­so be­ing trau­ma­tised by in­sen­si­tive com­ments be­ing made by in­di­vid­u­als on so­cial me­dia.

Trinidad na­tion­al So­raya Boodoo, a res­i­dent of the Al Fahi­di Res­i­dence in Dubai, yes­ter­day said neg­a­tive so­cial me­dia com­men­tary from here in T&T of­ten fails to cap­ture the anx­i­ety of cit­i­zens abroad, adding it had added to their anx­i­ety in the Mid­dle East.

“There are over 200 Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and their fam­i­lies liv­ing and work­ing in the UAE,” Boodoo said.

“We are teach­ers, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, en­gi­neers, en­tre­pre­neurs, hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­ers. We con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to our com­mu­ni­ties while con­tin­u­ing to sup­port T&T from afar. Yet care­less re­marks on­line hurt re­al peo­ple.”

She con­tin­ued, “None of us chose in­sta­bil­i­ty. We wake up every day, go to work, and try to live peace­ful­ly amid un­cer­tain­ty —just like peo­ple in Bahrain. We car­ry our pride, en­er­gy, and re­silience wher­ev­er we go. We just need em­pa­thy.”

Boodoo added, “This is not pol­i­tics. It’s hu­man­i­ty. Wher­ev­er we are in Bahrain, the UAE, or back home in T&T, peo­ple come first. And in un­cer­tain times, em­pa­thy mat­ters more than ever.”

Mean­while, Bahrain na­tion­al Bas­sam Al­dores­si spoke to the fear in the Mid­dle East dur­ing a live broad­cast here in T&T yes­ter­day on The Hu­man Im­pact pro­gramme on Free­dom 106.5FM.

“I just re­ceived an alert, it’s maybe a mis­sile com­ing in. This is now our nor­mal sit­u­a­tion. Don’t wor­ry,” he said.

As he spoke, emer­gency no­ti­fi­ca­tions punc­tu­at­ed his in­ter­view, a stark il­lus­tra­tion of the dai­ly re­al­i­ties fac­ing Bahrain and oth­er Gulf Co­op­er­a­tion Coun­cil (GCC) states.

“We didn’t ex­pect to be dragged in­to this war. Iran ba­si­cal­ly in­volved all the GCC coun­tries,” Al­dores­si, fund­ing di­rec­tor of the Bahrain Cen­tre for Hu­man Dig­ni­ty and Co­ex­is­tence, said.

Over the past sev­er­al days, Bahrain and neigh­bour­ing states have faced re­peat­ed drone and mis­sile at­tacks as Iran has re­spond­ed to the US-led at­tacks. Air­space has been tem­porar­i­ly closed and key fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing Bahrain’s air­port, have been struck.

De­spite the threat, Al­dores­si de­scribed a coun­try func­tion­ing un­der emer­gency pro­to­cols.

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent of the work­force is op­er­at­ing re­mote­ly; schools have shift­ed on­line, and food and en­er­gy sup­plies re­main sta­ble,” he said.

“We shift­ed in­to emer­gency mode with­in hours. The lessons we learned dur­ing COVID-19 helped us re­spond quick­ly.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing Bahrain’s small size com­pared to Iran, he added, “If we are de­lib­er­ate­ly dragged ful­ly in­to this, the whole re­gion would act dif­fer­ent­ly. Col­lec­tive de­fence arrange­ments are ready, and our al­lies stand with us.”

He al­so em­pha­sised the re­silience of the peo­ple in the face of the cur­rent ad­ver­si­ty.

analyse this re­gion on­ly through West­ern stan­dards of diplo­ma­cy. The re­al­i­ty here is com­plex, and or­di­nary peo­ple feel the im­pact.”