Hunger strike at Teteron

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Pris­on­ers de­tained at Teteron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay in Ch­aguara­mas em­barked on a hunger strike yes­ter­day and have vowed to keep it up un­til they are re­moved from the fa­cil­i­ties, which they say are un­fit for hu­man oc­cu­pa­tion.

Ac­cus­ing prison and po­lice of­fi­cials of em­ploy­ing “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare tac­tics” to break them, the 11 in­mates said, “We want the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn us to reg­u­lar de­ten­tion and re­move us from mil­i­tary de­ten­tion.”

The hunger strike be­gan with the pris­on­ers re­fus­ing break­fast and con­tin­ued through­out the day with re­fusals of lunch and din­ner.

While Prison Com­mis­sion­er Car­los Cor­raspe did not re­spond to calls, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­clared, “Jail is jail.”

Pressed on the calls by the in­mates, he fired back, “Per­sons in law­ful cus­tody do not get to pick and choose where they are housed. The next thing we will hear is that they will be ask­ing to be trans­ferred to Port-of-Spain Prison to take in the Car­ni­val vibes.”

The CoP fur­ther ex­plained, “The Prison Ser­vice as­signs in­mates based on se­cu­ri­ty needs and avail­able ac­com­mo­da­tion, not per­son­al pref­er­ence. Teteron and Staubles Bay were des­ig­nat­ed as pris­ons and all fa­cil­i­ties meet the stan­dards for law­ful de­ten­tion.”

How­ev­er, the pris­on­ers, speak­ing through one of their at­tor­neys, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, in­sist­ed that their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights con­tin­ue to be breached – and that they have an en­ti­tle­ment un­der the 1943 Prison Rules and the Pris­ons Act of T&T.

“We want to be re­moved from Teteron and Staubles Bay be­cause these places were not de­signed to be pris­ons,” they told Guardian Me­dia.

The pris­on­ers, who were trans­ferred to the two prison fa­cil­i­ties via a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE), which ex­pired at mid­night on Jan­u­ary 31, claimed many of them have been de­lib­er­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to phys­i­cal and men­tal an­guish at the hands of au­thor­i­ties.

Teteron and Staubles Bay were list­ed as prison fa­cil­i­ties fol­low­ing leg­isla­tive amend­ments made by Gov­ern­ment at the start of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed SoE. The pris­on­ers trans­ferred to Ch­aguara­mas were deemed to be a se­cu­ri­ty threat to the op­er­a­tions at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca. The au­thor­i­ties de­ter­mined that their trans­fer to the move se­cure army base would have al­lowed them to bring an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion at MSP un­der con­trol.

Sev­er­al at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing some of the pris­on­ers who re­main in­car­cer­at­ed in Ch­aguara­mas, not­ing con­tin­ued pre­vent­ed ac­cess to le­gal coun­sel, have called on Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and Cor­raspe to recog­nise their clients’ right to le­gal coun­sel.

The pris­on­ers al­so said they have not been able to see their fam­i­lies for months, hav­ing not been al­lowed any con­tact with the out­side world since Ju­ly 18, 2025.

“We have had no air­ing, so we have not seen the out­side of a cell since then,” they said.

Adding that their phys­i­cal health has been de­clin­ing, at least one in­mate spoke of the be­ing af­flict­ed by skin rash­es.

“We have been de­nied bed­sheets and the mat­tress­es we have to sleep on are filthy and mouldy. We have not been al­lowed any groom­ing prod­ucts, and many of us still have to use buck­ets to defe­cate in, which is a haz­ard to us.”

Re­veal­ing they have al­so been de­nied any read­ing ma­te­r­i­al, the in­mates said, “We are al­so not be­ing giv­en ac­cess to any doc­u­ments for our crim­i­nal mat­ters. There are some of us from whom de­fence state­ments were tak­en, and that is now in po­lice pos­ses­sion. We don’t know what has be­come of them, as we have had no con­tact with our at­tor­neys.”

The pris­on­ers claimed they were al­so be­ing de­nied med­ical at­ten­tion and med­ica­tion.

“One pris­on­er has been suf­fer­ing seizures on a reg­u­lar ba­sis and most times, we as in­mates have to care for him be­cause the au­thor­i­ties will just leave him,” they claimed.

Adding that any op­po­si­tion or at­tempt to stand up for them­selves had led to beat­ings and as­saults, they claimed, “There are record­ings which will con­firm this. There are re­ports of mul­ti­ple as­saults on pris­on­ers where se­ri­ous in­juries were sus­tained. Masked of­fi­cers abus­ing their pow­er...strip search­ing us and then con­fin­ing us to cells con­tin­u­ous­ly.”

The men un­der­scored that no one has been cau­tioned, in­ter­viewed, or charged rel­a­tive to any al­le­ga­tion Gov­ern­ment had made against pris­on­ers at the start of the SoE.

POA: In­car­cer­a­tion must nev­er be­come pun­ish­ment

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don is­sued a mea­sured re­sponse to the hunger strike yes­ter­day.

“In­car­cer­a­tion is the pun­ish­ment im­posed by the courts—it must nev­er be­come pun­ish­ment in it­self,” Gor­don said, point­ing out that this prin­ci­ple is firm­ly ground­ed in the Unit­ed Na­tions Stan­dard Min­i­mum Rules for the Treat­ment of Pris­on­ers, known as the Man­dela Rules, to which T&T is guid­ed.

“These rules make it clear that all per­sons de­prived of their lib­er­ty must be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and hu­man­i­ty, re­gard­less of the of­fence they are al­leged to have com­mit­ted.”

Like the pris­on­ers, Gor­don un­der­scored, “It is im­por­tant for the pub­lic to un­der­stand that many of the in­di­vid­u­als held at Teteron Bar­racks have not been found guilty of any of­fence. They are on re­mand, await­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their mat­ters be­fore the courts.

“Jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied, and when peo­ple are sub­ject­ed to con­di­tions that fall be­low ba­sic hu­man stan­dards while still legal­ly in­no­cent, it un­der­mines the very foun­da­tion of our jus­tice sys­tem.”

He said re­ports of in­ad­e­quate ven­ti­la­tion, lim­it­ed ac­cess to fam­i­ly vis­its, de­plorable san­i­tary con­di­tions, skin rash­es, and in­di­vid­u­als be­ing forced to re­lieve them­selves in buck­ets were “deeply trou­bling.”

“These are not lux­u­ries be­ing asked for—they are ba­sic hu­man rights and min­i­mum stan­dards of care,” Gor­don said.

“The Man­dela Rules are ex­plic­it on mat­ters of ac­com­mo­da­tion, san­i­ta­tion, health, con­tact with fam­i­ly, and hu­mane treat­ment.”

Gor­don added, “When jus­tice is not seen to be done, and when the con­di­tions of de­ten­tion be­come de­grad­ing, the con­se­quences ex­tend far be­yond the prison walls. It erodes pub­lic con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem, fu­els anger and re­sent­ment, and ul­ti­mate­ly neg­a­tive­ly af­fects the en­tire so­ci­ety. A sys­tem that mis­treats those in its cus­tody to­day can just as eas­i­ly fail law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to­mor­row.”

De­fend­ing his mem­bers against the pub­lic per­cep­tion that prison of­fi­cers were re­spon­si­ble, he said, “They are not the au­thors of these con­di­tions. Our of­fi­cers work un­der ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances, of­ten in fa­cil­i­ties that are them­selves un­fit for hu­man habi­ta­tion. They too are af­fect­ed—phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly, and moral­ly—by hav­ing to op­er­ate in en­vi­ron­ments that fall short of ac­cept­able stan­dards.”

The POA head re­newed the call for a se­ri­ous, co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse in­volv­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies, im­prove con­di­tions of de­ten­tion, and ac­cel­er­ate the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

“En­sur­ing hu­mane treat­ment is not about be­ing soft on crime; it is about be­ing firm on jus­tice, the rule of law, and re­spect for hu­man dig­ni­ty. How we treat the most pow­er­less among us is a true mea­sure of who we are as a so­ci­ety,” Gor­don said.