The T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) sup­ports all le­gal steps tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a safe and just so­ci­ety for its cit­i­zens. The TT­TI has not­ed the ini­tia­tives out­lined by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ex­pe­dite pro­cess­ing, case prepa­ra­tion and case flow man­age­ment. A state­ment from the TT­TI, how­ev­er, called on Gov­ern­ment to pub­lish the names of de­tainees and the rea­sons for de­ten­tion; pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on where they are be­ing held and al­low them to make con­tact with their fam­i­lies and ac­cess to le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The state­ment said: "Any sus­pen­sion of the rights of cit­i­zens is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter and we wel­come the pub­lic as­sur­ances that the au­thor­i­ties are be­ing care­ful not to in­fringe on the rights of the in­no­cent in the dis­charge of their du­ties.

"While ex­tend­ing the state of emer­gency will pro­vide the Gov­ern­ment with the space to con­tin­ue its ini­tia­tives to sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty con­clu­sive­ly, it will al­so cre­ate ad­di­tion­al stress­es on both our pop­u­la­tion and our se­cu­ri­ty forces." TT­TI said it be­lieved it was dan­ger­ous to mea­sure the suc­cess of the state of emer­gency in terms of the num­ber of peo­ple de­tained or weapons found, as it could re­sult in the de­ten­tion of in­no­cent cit­i­zens by over-zeal­ous se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel wish­ing to demon­strate good per­for­mance. Re­sults should be based on dis­man­tling crim­i­nal struc­tures from the mas­ter­minds down and ad­dress­ing the root caus­es that have led to this sit­u­a­tion, the state­ment said.

It called on Gov­ern­ment to com­plete re­views by the in­de­pen­dent tri­bunal at the ear­li­est, so that those held in er­ror could be re­leased. The state­ment added: "We note the as­sur­ances that the Gov­ern­ment has in place the process­es and re­sources to in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints of abuse. "Any mem­bers of our se­cu­ri­ty forces who act out­side of their le­git­i­mate pow­ers should be held ac­count­able and ap­pro­pri­ate dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion tak­en."