Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Na­tion of Is­lam leader Louis Far­rakhan says the Caribbean is be­ing mar­gin­alised. He said stu­dents who at­tained ter­tiary lev­el ed­u­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) were leav­ing Trinidad to go to places like Eng­land and the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca be­cause they can­not put their the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge to prac­tice. He said they will free the Caribbean of the clutch­es of the for­mer colo­nial mas­ters.

"It is our time to tru­ly be­come in­de­pen­dent of West­ern dom­i­na­tion of our lives and our wealth," he said. Far­rakhan is in Trinidad on a five-day vis­it. He vis­it­ed the coun­try in 1996 and 1975. Far­rakhan yes­ter­day spoke at a press con­fer­ence held at the Hy­att Re­gency, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. Men and women en­ter­ing the room were searched by for­eign­ers and the room was un­der scruti­ny for the du­ra­tion of the press con­fer­ence.

Far­rakhan said: "Un­der this crit­i­cal time in his­to­ry, the West In­dies must not be mar­gin­alised and al­though Trinidad is a great, great is­land with much wealth, the wealth of Trinidad by it­self is not as pow­er­ful as the wealth of the Caribbean stand­ing to­geth­er." He al­so said the Caribbean should not give up on agri­cul­ture.

Far­rakhan, who turns 79 in May, was ap­point­ed Na­tion of Is­lam leader in 1975 by his pre­de­ces­sor Eli­jah Muham­mad. He is ex­pect­ed to speak at the CLR James au­di­to­ri­um on Sat­ur­day at 5 pm and not at the UWI's Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre as pre­vi­ous­ly pub­li­cised. On Sun­day he speaks at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts.

Far­rakhan said he was not in Trinidad to dis­re­spect "the head of the house" or cre­ate ten­sion.