JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Some Jamaicans still want T&T boycott

by

20140112

Bare­ly a month af­ter talks be­tween For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and his Ja­maican coun­ter­part, Arnold J Nichol­son, to re­solve trade and im­mi­gra­tion is­sues be­tween the two coun­tries, a new sur­vey shows that some Ja­maicans are still in favour of a boy­cott of goods fromT&T and an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty are still up in arms over the de­ci­sion to refuse en­try to 13 Ja­maicans, in­clud­ing a child, late last year.

The calls for boy­cott came af­ter the Ja­maicans were turned back at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on No­vem­ber 20. The Ja­maicans claimed T&T im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers told them they were be­ing turned back due to the re­cent mur­der of a Trinida­di­an whose body was dis­cov­ered in St Cather­ine.They al­so claimed that the re­jec­tion of en­try was un­just be­cause both coun­tries are sig­na­to­ries to the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, which grants free­dom of move­ment to Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty cit­i­zens.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port in Ja­maica's Glean­er news­pa­per, a sur­vey com­mis­sioned by the Ja­maica Na­tion­al Build­ing So­ci­ety and done by John­son Sur­vey Re­search showed less than four in every 10 Ja­maicans (38 per cent) sup­port the boy­cott call, while 46 per cent said no to the boy­cott while 16 per cent were un­moved ei­ther way.Ja­maican school teacher Kesreen Green Dil­lon, who ini­ti­at­ed the boy­cott us­ing the so­cial me­dia, said she was dis­ap­point­ed at the find­ings of the sur­vey.

"So many things have been go­ing on and so many Ja­maicans tar­get­ed and I think a boy­cott would give us a chance to buy Ja­maican, which would help us grow," she said. Green Dil­lon said while she ac­cept­ed that peo­ple formed their opin­ions based on their so­cial­i­sa­tion, she ques­tioned how Ja­maicans culd not sup­port a boy­cott in light of the many re­ports of un­fair treat­ment by im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers in T&T.

The sur­vey showed that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Ja­maicans–75 per cent–said they were aware of the in­ci­dent when 13 peo­ple were turned back at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, and 61 per cent felt the ac­tion was wrong, even though T&T of­fi­cials re­peat­ed­ly de­nied they were re­fused en­try be­cause they were from Ja­maica. On­ly 15 per cent of the re­spon­dents agreed with the de­ci­sion to refuse the Ja­maicans en­try.

A to­tal of 1,008 res­i­dents of Ja­maica aged 18 and old­er were in­ter­viewed for the sur­vey which was con­duct­ed be­tween De­cem­ber 7 and 15.It was done just days af­ter talks in Kingston be­tween Dook­er­an and Nichol­son which cul­mi­nat­ed with an agree­ment on a path to im­prove free trade and free move­ment be­tween the two coun­tries.

At that time Dook­er­an said: "I think we have...cre­at­ed a plat­form for ad­dress­ing not on­ly the is­sues which brought this meet­ing to­geth­er, but for a wider set of con­sid­er­a­tions, both in our bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions, and in the re­la­tions with­in the wider Cari­com." Nichol­son has been in­vit­ed to vis­it Port-of-Spain by the end of the first quar­ter of this year for fur­ther con­sul­ta­tions to fol­low up on agree­ments com­ing out of the Kingston talks.

Mean­while, a re­cent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing T&T im­mi­gra­tion and Ja­maican ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty and co­me­di­an Christo­pher 'John­ny' Da­ley is threat­en­ing to re­vive the dis­pute. Da­ley said he was mis­treat­ed by air­port of­fi­cials and vent­ed his anger at the shab­by treat­ment on the so­cial net­work web­site Face­book last week.

He said he felt like a crim­i­nal even though he broke no im­mi­gra­tion law and was not in pos­ses­sion of any con­tra­band or banned items. Da­ley, in his Face­book post, said: "I had my worst trav­el ex­pe­ri­ence en­ter­ing the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go last night and I'm sor­ry to say it but Ja­maicans are tar­get­ed and pro­filed be­cause it hap­pened to me and my wife.

"A J Nichol­son, Mr Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, there is much work to be done. We were sus­pects the minute we walked up to im­mi­gra­tion. With­out scan­ning our pass­ports the In­di­an-look­ing of­fi­cer took up a phone and called some­one to in­di­cate that she felt sus­pi­cious.

Whilst on the phone, with the re­ceiv­er by her ears, she then asked a few ques­tions as to the pur­pose of our trip. She was told. She then asked if we were ac­tu­al­ly mar­ried and was re­spond­ed to. The of­fi­cer then point­ed out that I had sev­er­al work per­mits (for oth­er coun­tries in my pass­port) to the per­son on the phone, as if that was her rea­son for be­ing sus­pi­cious. She then scanned our books and asked us to sit across the way and wait.

"Af­ter fif­teen min­uets or so she called us over and hand­ed our pass­ports and sent us through. If the checks had end­ed there this note would not be writ­ten but as soon as we got to our bags and en­tered the cus­toms line it was clear that the cus­toms en­force­ment team that was wait­ing was prepped to look out for the sus­pects, 'aka Ja­maican crim­i­nals'."

Da­ley said that he and his wife were the on­ly ones searched by hand, and were asked to break open one of the beef pat­ties they were tak­ing for their hosts, af­ter which the of­fi­cer broke sev­er­al pieces of the gin­ger they were asked to take by their hosts, and squeezed the hard­dough bread so hard that "it lost its shape."

He said in­ter­ro­ga­tion was con­tin­ued by the cus­toms of­fi­cer, while two po­lice­men in plain clothes stood by. He was, among oth­er things, asked how long he had been in Ja­maica, if he had a crim­i­nal record and his trav­el his­to­ry.

Da­ley wrote: "She seemed quite dis­ap­point­ed and an­noyed that she found noth­ing alarm­ing in our lug­gage and then she did the most ridicu­lous thing I've ever ex­pe­ri­enced. She asked if I was wear­ing two trousers (re­mem­ber I live in the trop­ics ) to which my re­sponse was an ob­vi­ous no.

With­out hes­i­ta­tion she in­struct­ed me to go to a room with the two thug-look­ing men (po­lice). I shook my head and re­luc­tant­ly en­tered the tiny room. One thug stood at the door the oth­er asked me to lift my shirt up. I did since I had my un­der­shirt on. He gave me a pat down, searched the seam of my pants and then told me to step out."This has nev­er hap­pened be­fore in all my years of trav­el­ling, not even in the Unit­ed States, a coun­try that is con­stant­ly hav­ing to pro­tect its bor­ders from ter­ror­ists. It was hu­mil­i­at­ing.

"(Min­is­ter) Nichol­son, there was no re­spect shown to me and my wife. The Trinidad air­port per­son­nel seem to per­son­al­ly en­joy drag­ging us through the mud of their sys­tem. Suf­fice to say we bare­ly made the con­nect­ing flight to To­ba­go and got at­ti­tude from the Caribbean air­line staff on the ground for be­ing late for board­ing. Oh, and they left our lug­gage, by the way. For­tu­nate­ly our hosts in To­ba­go could drop a few names and it was lat­er de­liv­ered.

"My fel­low Ja­maicans, please have all your ducks in a row and your T's crossed if you need to trav­el to Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause we are be­ing tar­get­ed. They had no good rea­son to treat my wife and I the way they did so I can on­ly as­sume it's our na­tion­al­i­ty that was the is­sue. It's as if the im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms per­son­nel have re­placed The word Ja­maican with crim­i­nal, so please be care­ful."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored