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Friday, May 23, 2025

The truth that must be told

by

Guardian Media Limited
666 days ago
20230727

For the gen­er­a­tion that has grown to adult­hood since Ju­ly 27, 1990, pho­tos and videos can­not ful­ly con­vey the ter­ror and fury of that day, with the black smoke ris­ing from the fire at Po­lice Head­quar­ters, the gun­fire and ex­plo­sions in Port-of-Spain, and the fear and un­cer­tain­ty that gripped the na­tion.

How­ev­er, they live dai­ly with the con­se­quences of that failed coup and the per­ma­nent scar it has left on this so­ci­ety.

Af­ter 33 years, there still has been no jus­tice for the 24 cit­i­zens killed, or the hun­dreds more maimed and trau­ma­tised dur­ing the at­tempt­ed over­throw of the Gov­ern­ment.

The com­mem­o­ra­tions tak­ing place to­day are oc­ca­sions to re­mem­ber, to ho­n­our the mem­o­ries of the cit­i­zens vi­o­lent­ly struck down dur­ing those ter­ror-filled days, to re­in­force the dif­fi­cult lessons of that ex­pe­ri­ence but most of all, to nev­er for­get that as­sault on democ­ra­cy.

The truth about Ju­ly 27, 1990, must nev­er be hid­den or wa­tered down. Cit­i­zens who did not live through those hor­rif­ic events must be taught the facts and equipped with the knowl­edge they need to avoid a re­peat.

In many re­spects, it had been an un­event­ful Fri­day un­til 42 in­sur­gents led by Bi­laal Ab­dul­lah stormed the Red House, and Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son and most of his Cab­i­net were tak­en hostage in the Par­lia­ment cham­ber.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, an­oth­er 72 rebels, in­clud­ing Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, in­vad­ed State-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT).

The bomb­ing of Po­lice Head­quar­ters at around 5.50 pm, fol­lowed a few min­utes lat­er by Abu Bakr’s ap­pear­ance on tele­vi­sion to an­nounce that the Gov­ern­ment had been over­thrown, marked the be­gin­ning of six days of un­rest, with gun­fire ring­ing out across the city and loot­ing in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try.

By Au­gust 1, 1990, when the in­sur­gents sur­ren­dered, the cap­i­tal had been re­duced to a smoul­der­ing heap of rub­ble and the stench of death was heavy around the Red House.

In the decades since, T&T has strug­gled for clo­sure and there is a re­al dan­ger of the facts be­ing dis­tort­ed.

That is why the truth told about Ju­ly 27, 1990, must al­ways in­clude the so­cial fall­out, eco­nom­ic hard­ships in the months and weeks pre­ced­ing the failed coup. There are lessons to be learned in ex­am­in­ing the pre­vail­ing con­di­tions at that time—de­clin­ing pe­tro­le­um pro­duc­tion, falling oil prices, tax in­creas­es, and a de­val­ued TT dol­lar. The un­em­ploy­ment rate, then in the range of 22.3 per cent, was the high­est in the coun­try’s his­to­ry.

These fac­tors con­tributed to high lev­els of dis­con­tent among cit­i­zens. Protests were fre­quent. In the months be­fore the at­tempt­ed coup there had been a one-day strike, a March Against Hunger and sev­er­al trade unions had joined with civ­il so­ci­ety groups and the Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen to form the Sum­mit of Peo­ple's Or­gan­i­sa­tions (SOPO).

The search for the truth about the failed coup con­tin­ues to this day, even af­ter a com­mis­sion of en­quiry (CoE) that found that "the bur­geon­ing crime and the chang­ing na­ture of con­tem­po­rary crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go have their ori­gins in the events of 1990 and the af­ter­math there­of”.

Crime and vi­o­lence are fright­en­ing fea­tures of dai­ly life in this coun­try—a wound in­flict­ed dur­ing that as­sault on our democ­ra­cy that con­tin­ues to fes­ter.

T&T must find ways to heal, grow and re­gain all that was lost on that ter­ror-filled Fri­day 33 years ago.


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