SoE red flag

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

As an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE) takes hold, the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has raised red flags over sev­er­al sec­tions of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) 2026, warn­ing that the State is now polic­ing both the pub­lic’s free­dom of move­ment and ex­pres­sion un­der the guise of safe­ty.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said Sec­tion 11 of the EPR gov­ern­ing the SoE crim­i­nalis­es any pub­li­ca­tion, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia posts, and is an at­tempt by Gov­ern­ment to erode free­dom of speech.

Sec­tion 11 of the law states, “No per­son shall en­deav­our, whether oral­ly or oth­er­wise, to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty; or do any act or have any ar­ti­cle in his pos­ses­sion with a view to mak­ing or fa­cil­i­tat­ing the mak­ing of any such en­deav­our.”

Ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to si­lence any­one who crit­i­cis­es it, Beck­les said, “This Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly is not prac­tic­ing democ­ra­cy. This Gov­ern­ment is all dic­ta­tor­ship. This Gov­ern­ment is all about abuse of pow­er and this Gov­ern­ment is all about en­sur­ing that free­dom of ex­pres­sion no longer ex­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This is what this SoE is all about.”

Port-of-Spain MP Kei­th Scot­land ques­tioned, “Who de­cides what the per­son has ut­tered in what­ev­er man­ner is prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty?”

Un­der the last SoE, the Gov­ern­ment ex­e­cut­ed pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders (PDOs) for so­cial me­dia posts deemed threat­en­ing or il­le­gal.

In No­vem­ber last year, Alian­na Sama­roo, 30, was ar­rest­ed un­der a PDO af­ter post­ing a video on Tik­Tok call­ing on Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro to kill Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and mem­bers of her Cab­i­net. Af­ter spend­ing sev­en days in cus­tody, she was grant­ed $50,000 bail af­ter plead­ing guilty,

Olive Green-Jack was al­so de­tained that same month and sent to the Women’s Prison Gold­en Grove in Arou­ca, af­ter al­leged­ly cir­cu­lat­ing a pho­to of the Prime Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­dence on so­cial me­dia, ac­com­pa­nied by a post urg­ing the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to “tar­get” the home. The de­ten­tion or­der de­scribed her on­line ac­tiv­i­ty as pos­ing an “im­mi­nent threat to pub­lic safe­ty.” At the time, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is­sued the or­der pur­suant to Reg­u­la­tion 14, which al­lows the min­is­ter to de­tain in­di­vid­u­als deemed like­ly to act in a way harm­ful to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, as it was re­port­ed her pub­lic so­cial me­dia posts al­leged­ly in­vit­ed ex­ter­nal ac­tors to com­mit vi­o­lence against the Prime Min­is­ter, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and mem­bers of the pub­lic.

The Op­po­si­tion al­so yes­ter­day took is­sue with Sec­tions 4 and 12 of the reg­u­la­tions.

Un­der Sec­tion 4, the reg­u­la­tion grants the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) sweep­ing au­thor­i­ty to con­trol a per­son’s move­ment by re­strict­ing what they own, where they work, who they talk to and where they go, in­clud­ing the pow­er to im­pose cur­fews and track their every move­ment. And un­der Sec­tion 12, the law al­lows for war­rant­less ar­rests of peo­ple be­lieved to be in pos­ses­sion of ar­ti­cles in­tend­ed to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion.

In re­sponse to this, Scot­land called on cit­i­zens to be vig­i­lant of their rights, as he high­light­ed po­lice once again have the right to not on­ly ar­rest you based on your so­cial me­dia posts but al­so do so with force and with­out the courts.

Scot­land said, “What it means is this, they can say that a per­son tried oral­ly or oth­er­wise, print me­dia, so­cial me­dia, a post, a Tik­Tok, to prej­u­dice pub­lic safe­ty and in those cir­cum­stances a po­lice of­fi­cer with­out a war­rant, with the as­sis­tance of some­one else, with the use of force, can ap­pre­hend and de­tain such a sus­pect with­out the su­per­vi­sion of the court. This is a se­ri­ous con­cern for Trinidad and To­ba­go... We have reached a very cru­cial phase in the ex­is­tence of our democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go and I call up­on all right-think­ing cit­i­zens and you the me­dia to be vig­i­lant with your rights.”

The Op­po­si­tion ques­tioned if Gov­ern­ment’s new crime strat­e­gy was to gov­ern by SoE and blame the Op­po­si­tion.

Beck­les al­so slammed the Prime Min­is­ter’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for an­oth­er SoE as am­bigu­ous, giv­en her re­cent state­ments on crime re­duc­tion.

She not­ed the Prime Min­is­ter was disin­gen­u­ous for prais­ing a re­duc­tion in the crime rate thanks to the as­sis­tance of US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, then days lat­er de­clared an SoE to tack­le gang vi­o­lence.

She al­so called out the Prime Min­is­ter for stat­ing that the radar in To­ba­go was set up to re­duce crime, yet call­ing an­oth­er SoE be­cause the crim­i­nals were still run­ning ram­pant.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so crit­i­cised for her ab­sence from yes­ter­day’s ad­dress on the SoE.

Beck­les said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had slammed for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for not at­tend­ing a sim­i­lar me­dia con­fer­ence when the SoE was an­nounced un­der his ad­min­is­tra­tion, yet she did the same.