STOP THE HATE!

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Busi­ness­man Gary Aboud is warn­ing that mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty may even­tu­al­ly choose to leave the coun­try if what he de­scribes as grow­ing racial tar­get­ing and po­lit­i­cal hos­til­i­ty con­tin­ues.

Aboud’s com­ments fol­low re­marks made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dur­ing Wednes­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), where he linked the ‘one per cent’ to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Je­re­mie sig­nalled Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to in­ten­si­fy its crack­down on or­gan­ised crime, stat­ing that au­thor­i­ties would pur­sue white-col­lar crim­i­nals and those who fa­cil­i­tate crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, re­gard­less of their wealth, sta­tus or in­flu­ence. He al­so ref­er­enced the so-called “one per cent,” which is used to re­fer to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty in T&T, ar­gu­ing that in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in crim­i­nal con­duct would face the same treat­ment as gang mem­bers, re­gard­less of their so­cial stand­ing.

The com­ments have gen­er­at­ed pub­lic dis­cus­sion, par­tic­u­lar­ly among mem­bers of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, some of whom have in­ter­pret­ed the rhetoric as un­fair­ly cast­ing sus­pi­cion on suc­cess­ful busi­ness fam­i­lies.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Aboud re­ject­ed the AG’s sug­ges­tion, say­ing the is­sue had evolved be­yond pol­i­tics and was now touch­ing on ques­tions of race, iden­ti­ty and na­tion­al uni­ty.

Aboud said he was trou­bled by what he viewed as an emerg­ing nar­ra­tive that equates fi­nan­cial suc­cess with crim­i­nal con­duct.

“For me, to re­duce some­body’s life suc­cess, the bril­liance of their ef­fort, their sac­ri­fice, their fam­i­ly’s sac­ri­fice and ac­cuse them of un­der­world ac­tiv­i­ty, I think it is ir­re­spon­si­ble and un­be­com­ing at best,” he said.

Aboud ar­gued that suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs should be viewed as ex­am­ples of achieve­ment rather than tar­gets of sus­pi­cion. He main­tained that if the au­thor­i­ties pos­sess ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing against any in­di­vid­ual, that ev­i­dence should be tak­en through the prop­er law en­force­ment chan­nels.

“Take it to the po­lice,” he said.

“My hands are as clean as I would want them to be.”

How­ev­er, he said he was con­cerned about the nar­ra­tive the Gov­ern­ment was cur­rent­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ing, not­ing it had be­gun be­fore the AG’s state­ment.

“The UNC Gov­ern­ment has bought in­to a di­rect line of at­tack of peo­ple of Mediter­ranean ex­tract,” Aboud said.

The out­spo­ken busi­ness­man ar­gued that the po­lit­i­cal rhetoric that ap­pears to sin­gle out eth­nic groups risks deep­en­ing so­cial di­vi­sions in a na­tion built on mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.

“I can­not share this racist ide­ol­o­gy and these racist slurs,” he said.

“The soon­er we ad­dress these is­sues in a pub­lic way, the bet­ter our flag will be and the more uni­fied our peo­ple will be.”

While stress­ing that he iden­ti­fies first and fore­most as a Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zen, Aboud said he has spent much of his life con­fronting prej­u­dice linked to his eth­nic back­ground.

“I live by the flag of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said. “Since I was 11 years old and we had the Black Pow­er move­ment, peo­ple would say the worst things about me be­cause of my race.”

Ac­cord­ing to Aboud, some mem­bers of his ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly chose to leave the coun­try years ago be­cause they felt sub­ject­ed to dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“Many of my first cousins have cho­sen not to live in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause the racial per­se­cu­tion and tor­ment was over­whelm­ing,” he said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les al­so took aim at Je­re­mie over re­marks he in the de­bate con­cern­ing al­leged crim­i­nal el­e­ments and ref­er­ences to the so-called “one per cent.”

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate, she too chal­lenged the AG to take any ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing to law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties rather than mak­ing al­le­ga­tions un­der par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

“If you have any ev­i­dence against me, take it to the po­lice,” she said.

“Don’t on­ly come and use par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to make all kinds of ac­cu­sa­tions when you know you have no ev­i­dence.”

Aboud and sev­er­al oth­er busi­ness­men have had their US visas re­cent­ly re­voked. At the time of his visa re­vo­ca­tion, Aboud told the me­dia he be­lieved the de­ci­sion stemmed from his pub­lic crit­i­cism of what he had de­scribed as ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers in the Caribbean by US au­thor­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the AG, the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment has used its in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties to iden­ti­fy and ban cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als from trav­el­ling to the Unit­ed States due to their ac­tiv­i­ties.

“I sup­port law and or­der with­in every com­mu­ni­ty of T&T and urge the Po­lice Ser­vice to in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute blue-col­lar and white-col­lar crim­i­nals or gang mem­bers, of every racial com­mu­ni­ty, bar none, in­clud­ing my own,” Aboud said.

Guardian Me­dia is await­ing a re­sponse from oth­er busi­ness own­ers to the com­ments made by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Ques­tions were al­so sent to the US em­bassy about the re­vo­ca­tion of US visas for mem­bers of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, it was Aboud’s com­ments about the po­ten­tial con­se­quences of con­tin­ued eth­nic ten­sion that car­ried per­haps the strongest warn­ing. He ques­tioned whether Syr­i­an-Lebanese cit­i­zens were be­ing made to feel un­wel­come in a coun­try where many of their fam­i­lies have lived for gen­er­a­tions.

“Is the UNC say­ing that the 10,000-odd Syr­i­an-Lebanese peo­ple that live in T&T should sell out every­thing?” he asked.

“Does she (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) want all of the peo­ple of Mediter­ranean ex­tract to sell their prop­er­ties and evac­u­ate Trinidad and To­ba­go?”

Aboud said such con­ver­sa­tions were no longer hy­po­thet­i­cal.

“It is hap­pen­ing right now,” he claimed.

“Many peo­ple are afraid to live in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause they’re afraid of the nar­ra­tive that is be­ing cre­at­ed.”

He warned that any per­cep­tion of racial hos­til­i­ty could have far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions not on­ly for so­cial co­he­sion but al­so for in­vest­ment and eco­nom­ic growth.

“If you cre­ate evil, evil will pros­per,” he said.

The busi­ness­man point­ed to sev­er­al promi­nent fam­i­lies of Syr­i­an-Lebanese de­scent who have be­come deeply in­te­grat­ed in­to T&T’s so­cial and eco­nom­ic fab­ric over gen­er­a­tions.

“These are in­te­grat­ed peo­ple, in­te­grat­ed in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

He ar­gued that de­mon­is­ing en­tire com­mu­ni­ties be­cause of the ac­tions or al­leged ac­tions of a few in­di­vid­u­als would ul­ti­mate­ly weak­en the coun­try.

“There will be no na­tion­al suc­cess, no eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, no equi­lib­ri­um in the bal­ance of the bud­get if we are not uni­fied,” Aboud said.

“Uni­ty is the wealth that our na­tion can bring to the world.”

When asked di­rect­ly whether the cur­rent dis­course could af­fect in­vestor con­fi­dence, Aboud did not hes­i­tate.

“Ab­solute­ly,” he re­spond­ed.

While em­pha­sis­ing his own com­mit­ment to T&T, Aboud ad­mit­ted that even pa­tri­ots have lim­its.

“My­self, per­son­al­ly, I am plant­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“It will take 10,000 UNCs to make me even con­sid­er leav­ing. But I am a hard­core pa­tri­ot. I would die for this flag.”

De­spite that de­c­la­ra­tion, Aboud said he be­lieves many oth­ers would not re­main un­der sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances.

“I am cer­tain that 99.9 per cent of all peo­ple in Trinidad would have al­ready left if the UNC did to them what they are do­ing to me,” he claimed.

“Any cit­i­zen would leave and I would en­cour­age any cit­i­zen to run from a coun­try where a Prime Min­is­ter, an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, a Min­is­ter of Hous­ing are at­tack­ing you with racist slurs.”

He added, “If they con­tin­ue, I am go­ing to my­self go on a plat­form to en­cour­age every per­son who in­vests in this coun­try to pull up their roots and find some­where else. Fer­tile ground where peo­ple are lov­ing and car­ing.”

Aboud sug­gest­ed that there is a lim­it to what any com­mu­ni­ty can en­dure.

“If the Jews could leave Ger­many, the Syr­i­an-Lebanese can leave Trinidad,” he said.