Kevon Felmine

Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas says T&T is a vi­o­lent na­tion. He said so in re­sponse to re­ceiv­ing sev­er­al threat­en­ing phone calls at his home and of­fice.He added his col­leagues have been con­tact­ed by peo­ple seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on him, leav­ing him feel­ing threat­ened.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day at Radis­son Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, Dou­glas said since the pub­lic air­ing of pro­test­ers burn­ing an ef­fi­gy of him on Sun­day, it was eas­i­er for peo­ple to tar­get him.

He al­so con­demned a state­ment by the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice's par­ty or­gan­is­er Akins Vi­dale that de­stroy­ing ef­fi­gies was part of T&T's cul­ture.He said: "I feel threat­ened. As a mat­ter of fact, I am threat­ened. Peo­ple have called me, they have called my house and they have called my friends. There are peo­ple call­ing my col­leagues and ask­ing them for in­for­ma­tion about me all the time."Prob­a­bly he doesn't know this or isn't aware of this but I hope he will apol­o­gise to this na­tion and un­der­stand the sever­i­ty.

"This is Au­gust and the elec­tion has not even got­ten go­ing. Imag­ine what will hap­pen next year. They will be burn­ing down the town."It now be­comes eas­i­er for peo­ple walk­ing the streets to feel that it is easy to use some kind of vi­o­lence against me so I am call­ing on the MSJ to apol­o­gise for that kind of state­ment.

"This is a vi­o­lent na­tion. Every­day we have two or three peo­ple be­ing killed or mur­dered and we can't have more im­ages to sup­port those things."For a po­lit­i­cal par­ty to come out and make that state­ment, it is a cry­ing shame in this coun­try," Dou­glas added.De­scrib­ing the protest as vi­o­lent, he said peo­ple could draw on those im­ages when they were ready to ri­ot and fight. He said such protests could es­ca­late to the vi­o­lence be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in Rwan­da.

"If you an­nounced over the ra­dio or on the TV, peo­ple squash­ing cock­roach­es, or call­ing oth­er groups rats, then you would have cre­at­ed a mind­set that makes it easy."This is not Good Fri­day, this is liv­ing peo­ple that we are talk­ing about, ac­tive peo­ple who are walk­ing the streets," he added.