Beckles calls for end to SoE amid protest arrests

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to end the State of Emer­gency, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of sup­press­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ex­pres­sion while dis­miss­ing pub­lic out­rage over the killing of Joshua Sama­roo in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in Jan­u­ary.

In a state­ment on Wednes­day night, Beck­les said Trinidad and To­ba­go was drift­ing dan­ger­ous­ly close to be­com­ing “a polic­ing state,” af­ter po­lice ar­rest­ed two demon­stra­tors in­volved in the “19 Bul­lets, 19 Protests” cam­paign out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) ear­li­er that day.

The cam­paign is be­ing led by friends and sup­port­ers of Ka­ia Sealy and Sama­roo, who was shot dead by po­lice in St Au­gus­tine on Jan­u­ary 20 fol­low­ing a high-speed chase. The demon­stra­tions in­ten­si­fied af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard di­rect­ed that Sealy be charged with manslaugh­ter in re­la­tion to Sama­roo’s death, along with sev­en oth­er charges.

The charges sparked wide­spread back­lash, with sup­port­ers al­leg­ing a po­lice cov­er-up and de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty over the shoot­ing.

Wednes­day’s protest end­ed in con­fronta­tion, af­ter po­lice re­port­ed­ly de­nied per­mis­sion for the gath­er­ing un­der cur­rent emer­gency reg­u­la­tions. Protest or­gan­is­er Alyssa Phillip was among three peo­ple ar­rest­ed dur­ing clash­es with of­fi­cers.

Beck­les ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of triv­i­al­is­ing le­git­i­mate pub­lic con­cern by sug­gest­ing pro­test­ers were sim­ply try­ing to pro­voke po­lice in­to re­act­ing vi­o­lent­ly.

“As Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, I call up­on the PM to re­turn democ­ra­cy to its un­fet­tered po­si­tion con­tem­plat­ed by our Con­sti­tu­tion by end­ing the failed SoE and al­low­ing our peo­ple the free­dom to ex­press them­selves peace­ful­ly and de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly,” Beck­les said.

She said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had “once again” cho­sen to ad­dress a na­tion­al con­tro­ver­sy re­mote­ly while con­demn­ing pro­test­ers who, she ar­gued, were ex­er­cis­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights.

“The PM states, by way of con­dem­na­tion, that it is ‘pub­lic­i­ty farm­ing’ with a view to forc­ing an ar­rest to ‘claim vic­tim sta­tus’ for voic­es ex­press­ing con­cern,” Beck­les not­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had ear­li­er de­fend­ed the po­lice re­sponse and de­scribed the pro­test­ers as “grifters,” sug­gest­ing they were in­ten­tion­al­ly seek­ing con­fronta­tion with law en­force­ment. She al­so ar­gued she had not seen sim­i­lar protests dur­ing the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But Beck­les re­ject­ed that nar­ra­tive, ac­cus­ing the PM of hypocrisy and se­lec­tive out­rage.

“She has turned a blind eye, giv­ing tac­it ap­proval to protests of a sim­i­lar size in Siparia against an al­der­man who crossed the po­lit­i­cal floor away from the UNC,” Beck­les claimed.

She al­so took is­sue with the po­lice re­sponse to the gath­er­ing, say­ing the ar­rests of demon­stra­tors and so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ties had cre­at­ed fear among or­di­nary cit­i­zens.

“The ar­rest of demon­stra­tor and so­cial me­dia com­men­ta­tor Ja­son De Sil­va, de­tained by se­nior of­fi­cers be­fore a sin­gle chant could be raised out­side the Of­fice of the DPP, fol­lowed by the ar­rest of Alyssa Phillip in quick suc­ces­sion, has sent chills down the spines of every right-think­ing per­son,” she said.

Beck­les ar­gued that footage cir­cu­lat­ing on­line did not jus­ti­fy the lev­el of force used by of­fi­cers as­sem­bled out­side the DPP’s of­fice.

“To­day’s voic­es did not ap­pear dis­or­der­ly. To­day’s ac­tions by cit­i­zens, ap­par­ent­ly peace­ful­ly as­sem­bled, re­sem­bled acts of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion of­ten cher­ished by so­ci­eties that val­ue fun­da­men­tal free­doms,” she stat­ed.

Ref­er­enc­ing a May 24th T&T Po­lice Ser­vice me­dia re­lease on pub­lic gath­er­ings dur­ing the State of Emer­gency, Beck­les point­ed out that po­lice them­selves ac­knowl­edged protests were not ex­press­ly pro­hib­it­ed once they com­plied with emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

“A small gath­er­ing ad­e­quate­ly su­per­vised, as ap­peared to be the case to­day (Wednes­day), can and ought to have been met with dis­per­sion and ex­pla­na­tion,” she said.

She al­so warned that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pub­lic com­ments about Sealy risked prej­u­dic­ing fu­ture court pro­ceed­ings.

“Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as a se­nior coun­sel in law, has con­tin­ued to dig her heels in­to mak­ing stri­dent state­ments akin to opin­ions of guilt against Ka­ia Sealey,” Beck­les ar­gued.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader fur­ther sug­gest­ed the coun­try was be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly in­tol­er­ant of dis­sent.

“When a na­tion wit­ness­es a PM who ap­pears to favour on­ly those in vo­cif­er­ous sup­port of her, whilst be­rat­ing any­one that dares to speak to is­sues that she’d rather keep buried, we know and ought to know that we are in free-fall crash mode head­ing to dis­as­ter,” she said.

Beck­les end­ed with a di­rect ap­peal to Per­sad-Bisses­sar to aban­don what she de­scribed as in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics and re-en­gage pub­licly with the na­tion.

“No coun­try can sur­vive when peace­ful cit­i­zens are treat­ed like en­e­mies of the State,” she said.

“Af­ter near­ly a year un­der a now failed SoE, the peo­ple de­serve bet­ter than in­tim­i­da­tion and si­lence.”