Penny and Rowley push back against PM and Sturge over ZOSO defence

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has crit­i­cised De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge over com­ments sug­gest­ing that lim­it­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights is “a small price to pay” if the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion helps re­move il­le­gal firearms from com­mu­ni­ties.

Sturge made the re­mark dur­ing Wednes­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on law re­form. In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, Beck­les said while the Op­po­si­tion con­demns vi­o­lent crime and sup­ports firm ac­tion against gangs and il­le­gal weapons, crime-fight­ing must be done law­ful­ly.

“The idea that con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are a ‘small price to pay’ for se­cu­ri­ty is deeply dan­ger­ous,” Beck­les said, stress­ing that rights are not op­tion­al priv­i­leges but the foun­da­tion of democ­ra­cy and the rule of law.

She warned that pub­lic safe­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions must work hand in hand, not be set against each oth­er.

Beck­les de­scribed the min­is­ter’s com­ments as “reck­less, dis­turb­ing, un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, and un­be­com­ing” of some­one sworn to up­hold the Con­sti­tu­tion. She said that fun­da­men­tal rights are not ex­pend­able con­ve­niences but safe­guards against abuse of State pow­er.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s record, not­ing that the coun­try is cur­rent­ly un­der a State of Emer­gency—set to end on Jan­u­ary 31—dur­ing which ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers have al­ready been ex­er­cised.

She ques­tioned what tan­gi­ble re­sults have been achieved in terms of sus­tained crime re­duc­tion and the dis­man­tling of crim­i­nal net­works.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader ex­pressed con­cern that the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill could ex­pand and nor­malise war­rant­less search­es and ar­rests, con­cen­trat­ing these pow­ers in spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties—pri­mar­i­ly those poor and mar­gin­alised. She said this would amount to “col­lec­tive sus­pi­cion”, where one’s ge­og­ra­phy ef­fec­tive­ly de­ter­mines guilt by as­so­ci­a­tion, and con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions be­come con­di­tion­al.

She re­ject­ed as­sur­ances that or­di­nary cit­i­zens have noth­ing to fear, say­ing that ret­ro­spec­tive reme­dies, such as nom­i­nal dam­ages, can­not sub­sti­tute for con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions be­fore rights are vi­o­lat­ed.

On Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar took to so­cial me­dia plat­form X, where she crit­i­cised op­po­nents of the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

“Over the past few days, dur­ing com­men­tary on the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, the coun­try has wit­nessed a pa­rade of weak men and women op­pos­ing the Bill, whose on­ly ap­par­ent goal is the de­fence of vi­o­lent crim­i­nals. It is as­ton­ish­ing how the PNM and pseu­do ‘in­de­pen­dent’ groups have sud­den­ly dis­cov­ered a man­u­fac­tured sense of hu­man­i­ty to de­fend crim­i­nals and gang­sters. They say noth­ing about the crime, rob­beries, rapes, mur­ders, and bru­tal home in­va­sions that have plagued the coun­try for the past decade. They al­so re­main silent on the de­hu­man­is­ing treat­ment en­dured by vic­tims of crime.”

Row­ley warns ZOSO bill risks abuse of pow­er, di­vi­sion

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so chal­lenged Sturge’s de­fence of the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion, warn­ing that the the Gov­ern­ment risks court­ing abuse, re­sent­ment, and so­cial di­vi­sion un­der the guise of fight­ing crime.

“If I had said any­thing near­ly as of­fen­sive and ar­ro­gant as what Kam­la re­cent­ly said, every­one in this coun­try would have known not to ac­cept that from the Prime Min­is­ter,” Row­ley said. “I am proud of that fact. It con­firms to me that I was held to a high­er stan­dard, and I am sat­is­fied that I met those stan­dards.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Row­ley de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the leg­is­la­tion as dan­ger­ous in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s al­ready tense, mul­ti-racial and mul­ti-eth­nic en­vi­ron­ment, ar­gu­ing that it risks crim­i­nal­is­ing en­tire com­mu­ni­ties while strip­ping law-abid­ing cit­i­zens of en­trenched rights.

“To stig­ma­tise com­mu­ni­ties and re­moval of the en­trenched rights of the law-abid­ing at the be­hest of of­fi­cers with­out par­lia­men­tary over­sight is not what one ex­pects from a Gov­ern­ment that is pre­pared to do its job of go­ing af­ter the law­break­ers with­out tram­pling on those who are law-abid­ing,” he said.

He warned that in a po­lit­i­cal­ly di­vid­ed so­ci­ety, ap­peals to “fight­ing crime” may not be enough to con­tain the fall­out once the law is en­forced.

“Giv­en the di­vi­sive pol­i­tics and the sus­pi­cious na­ture of so many, it may very well turn out that the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of ‘fight­ing crime’ might not be enough to man­age the fall­out when the law is ap­plied,” Row­ley cau­tioned, adding that “un­su­per­vised au­thor­i­ty will breed abuse and re­sent­ment and all that flows.”

Dur­ing the Sen­ate de­bate, Sturge in­sist­ed the bill is not in­tend­ed to af­fect or­di­nary cit­i­zens, say­ing law-abid­ing res­i­dents would on­ly be sub­ject to ac­tion where there is rea­son­able sus­pi­cion or law­ful grounds.

Scot­land warns against sac­ri­fic­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South Kei­th Scot­land con­tend­ed that pub­lic safe­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights must go hand in hand.

“The idea that con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are a ‘small price to pay’ for se­cu­ri­ty is deeply dan­ger­ous. Rights are not op­tion­al priv­i­leges; they are the foun­da­tion of democ­ra­cy and the rule of law. While the State must con­front vi­o­lent crime, it can­not do so by weak­en­ing the very pro­tec­tions that safe­guard or­di­nary cit­i­zens.”

Pas­tor Dot­tin urges broad con­sul­ta­tion and care­ful adap­ta­tion

Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor and for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­ber Clive Dot­tin said such as­sur­ances do not re­move the need for broad con­sul­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly where con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are con­cerned.

“The is­sue of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights will al­ways,  and I want to re­peat, will al­ways trig­ger a lot of con­ver­sa­tion,” Dot­tin said. While he sup­ports the con­cept of Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, he cau­tioned against im­port­ing the Ja­maican mod­el un­crit­i­cal­ly.

“What helped Ja­maica is that it is not as plur­al as Trinidad, and the pol­i­tics is dif­fer­ent,” Dot­tin said. “In Trinidad, pol­i­tics is pri­mar­i­ly based on race, re­li­gion, colour and con­trast. That is a fact.”

Dot­tin said the Gov­ern­ment must en­gage in­sti­tu­tions and the wider so­ci­ety be­fore mov­ing for­ward. “I still sup­port the zone of spe­cial op­er­a­tions, but I think it would be im­por­tant to deal with cer­tain in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try and have con­sul­ta­tions on those rights that have to be sus­pend­ed,” he said.

“Bal­anc­ing Tough Polic­ing with Hu­man Rights”

Crim­i­nol­o­gist: Bal­ance tough polic­ing with­out vi­o­lat­ing rights

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad al­so weighed in, stat­ing that while law en­force­ment must be em­pow­ered to deal de­ci­sive­ly with heav­i­ly armed crim­i­nals, there is a clear dan­ger in push­ing en­force­ment be­yond ac­cept­able lim­its.

“There are things which are le­gal and well with­in the re­mit of law en­force­ment to deal with peo­ple with AK-47s,” Seep­er­sad said, but warned that on that con­tin­u­um, bound­aries can be pushed to the point where hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions be­come un­ac­cept­able.

Dr Seep­er­sad not­ed that while there are times when rights may be tem­porar­i­ly cur­tailed to ad­dress se­ri­ous crim­i­nal threats, the over­ar­ch­ing goal must be the pro­tec­tion of the wider pop­u­la­tion.

“Some­times it be­comes nec­es­sary to take a tougher stance to deal with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment,” he said. “But it all de­pends on how far you’re will­ing to go.”

UWI lec­tur­er: Watch close­ly for mil­i­tari­sa­tion of polic­ing

Mean­while, Dr Mazi­ki Thame, Se­nior Lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona, Ja­maica, warned that ZOSOs and sim­i­lar mea­sures pose se­ri­ous risks, par­tic­u­lar­ly the grad­ual mil­i­tari­sa­tion of polic­ing.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Dr Thame said Trinida­di­ans should pay close at­ten­tion to the di­rec­tion law en­force­ment could take un­der such frame­works.

“I think that one of the things that Trinida­di­ans should be aware of is the di­rec­tion of polic­ing, the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of polic­ing,” she said. Dr Thame not­ed that in Ja­maica, Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions and States of Emer­gency place the Ja­maica De­fence Force di­rect­ly in­to polic­ing roles.

“There are cer­tain risks as­so­ci­at­ed with that, but there is al­so a way in which the po­lice are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly mil­i­tarised them­selves,” she said.

Dr Thame al­so chal­lenged claims that ZOSOs au­to­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late in­to safer com­mu­ni­ties, ar­gu­ing that every­day com­mu­ni­ty life is of­ten se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed.

“Com­mu­ni­ty life is large­ly shut down in some com­mu­ni­ties,” she said. “So the very things that some of us would ar­gue are the source of re­pair for com­mu­ni­ties that ex­pe­ri­ence high vi­o­lence are cur­tailed by these Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, be­cause ef­fec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­ties just can­not go about their busi­ness as nor­mal.”

Ad­dress­ing Ja­maica’s re­cent de­cline in mur­der fig­ures, Thame urged cau­tion, not­ing that ZOSOs have been in place since around 2017 and that the re­port­ed drop in killings co­in­cid­ed with an in­crease in po­lice shoot­ings.

“The mur­ders have re­port­ed­ly de­clined last year, and it co­in­cid­ed with an uptick in po­lice killings. I don’t think that that is co­in­ci­den­tal,” she said, adding that much of the avail­able da­ta is based on po­lice self-re­port­ing.