The National Workers Union (NWU) unreservedly condemns the attack by the police on the protestors at the Queens Park-Savannah on Sunday January 16th. It is an outrage that the armed forces of the state could be unleashed on citizens of Trinidad and Tobago because they oppose a policy of the government.
Citizens have fought over the years to gain the right to express freely their positions on issues of national importance and the right to assemble in order to get their positions across. No amount of colonial Summary Offences Acts or public health regulations can justify such a vicious, unwarranted, violent assault on people who were posing no threat to the lives or property of others.
It is clear that with the failure of the Rowley Administration to force workers to vaccinate by the middle of January, it has unleashed the dogs of war against those they deem opposed to them. This action confirms the view that the police in T&T is not in the business of detecting crime and arresting criminals, but in that of keeping order; and order seems to be what the ruling party says it is. Indeed, the Acting Commissioner of Police has admitted that the Guard and Emergency Branch is set up to deal with in his words “protests and demonstrations.” How colonial!
You could wine and jump up in the road during an election campaign, but woe be unto you if you gather together to make your views known if those views do not align to the policies of the government of the day. This is a sign not of strength, but of weakness and desperation. What next? Are they going to go on house to house searches, not for guns, but for vaccine cards?
The National Workers Union calls upon the state to cease and desist from infringing, through armed force, the democratic rights that workers and others have won over the years. The NWU calls upon the citizens to continue holding dear their right to freedom of expression and of assembly and their right to hold dissenting views from those who hold state power.
From the news desk of The National Workers Union
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Gerry Kangalee (National Education and Research Officer – Cell: 785-7637)
Replies
What a state!
Why would WHEN STEEL TALKS put up THIS NEWS when they were SO QUICK to TAKE DOWN my POSTINGS on THE EVILS OF THE PNM GOVERNMENT?
I am an INFORMED FOLLOWER of POLITICS IN TRINIDAD ... I have been following this NATION DESTROYING PARTY since 1956 ....
WST drank the KoolAid.