Law Association questions protest ban under SoE

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) has bro­ken its si­lence on the State of Emer­gency and the Gov­ern­ment's ban on protests near key state in­sti­tu­tions, ques­tion­ing whether the re­stric­tions are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly jus­ti­fied and call­ing for ev­i­dence to sup­port con­tin­ued emer­gency pow­ers.

In a state­ment on Thurs­day, LATT ac­knowl­edged the se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges which led to the March 2, 2026 State of Emer­gency but warned emer­gency pow­ers are in­tend­ed for ex­cep­tion­al and tem­po­rary cir­cum­stances and do not pro­vide an un­lim­it­ed li­cence to re­strict fun­da­men­tal rights.

The as­so­ci­a­tion raised con­cerns about the Emer­gency Pow­ers (Pro­hi­bi­tion of Pub­lic Protests and Demon­stra­tions) Or­der 2026, which bars protests with­in a 500-me­tre ra­dius of 15 lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing ma­jor cen­tres of gov­ern­men­tal and ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ty.

"The ques­tion aris­es whether this re­stric­tion is ra­tio­nal­ly con­nect­ed to the stat­ed ob­jec­tive of the State of Emer­gency," LATT said, ar­gu­ing the mea­sure could un­der­mine the ef­fec­tive­ness of protest and po­ten­tial­ly ex­tin­guish con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to peace­ful as­sem­bly and ex­pres­sion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so re­ferred to re­ports of ar­rests out­side the des­ig­nat­ed zones, warn­ing that en­force­ment with­out ad­e­quate pub­lic guid­ance could un­der­mine con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and have a chill­ing ef­fect on con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms.

LATT called on au­thor­i­ties to re­view the Or­der, urged po­lice to clar­i­fy the ex­clu­sion zones, and asked Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide mea­sur­able, ev­i­dence-based jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for ex­tend­ing the State of Emer­gency.