Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to is­sue a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der (PDO) against a 16-year-old boy, the first mi­nor de­tained un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The min­is­ter is­sued his state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, ad­dress­ing con­cerns about parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty.

He said, “Do you al­ways know, or do you know at all where your chil­dren are and what they are do­ing? Your pub­lic state­ments sound good to (those) who think that he is a child. If you keep telling your­self that, you too will start be­liev­ing it. But the com­mu­ni­ty knows dif­fer­ent­ly.”

Alexan­der con­tin­ued, “In­stead of you, as a par­ent, try­ing to rope in your son and hold him ac­count­able you con­tin­ue to sup­port his ac­tions. How will that help him? I hope for a re­al­ly pos­i­tive out­come at the end of it all.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, George’s par­ents, Mar­lon Ward and Lis­lles George, said their son, a form three stu­dent at St Joseph Sec­ondary, is miss­ing end-of-term ex­ams and that his de­ten­tion is af­fect­ing his men­tal health.

“I just want my son to come home. He can go to school. He can fin­ish what he has to do, fur­ther his ed­u­ca­tion, my son be­ing there is play­ing with he men­tal,” his fa­ther said.

Ac­cord­ing to the PDO, he was “cred­i­bly iden­ti­fied by con­fi­den­tial in­tel­li­gence as a mem­ber of the Ras­ta City/Sev­en Gang.”

The or­der al­leges he is a “shoot­er for the gang” with ac­cess to a cache of high-pow­ered firearms and am­mu­ni­tion in­tend­ed to ex­pand the gang’s ter­ri­to­ry.

It fur­ther claims he and oth­ers planned re­tal­ia­to­ry shoot­ings against ri­val gangs, mak­ing his de­ten­tion nec­es­sary to dis­rupt these acts.

The boy is cur­rent­ly be­ing held at the Youth Train­ing and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (YTRC) in Arou­ca.

The case has sparked de­bate over the use of PDOs against mi­nors. While the Gov­ern­ment ar­gues the mea­sure is a pre­ven­tive tool to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties and dis­rupt gang vi­o­lence, crit­ics warn it may raise le­gal and hu­man rights con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing chil­dren’s ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion and due process.

The on­go­ing SoE was de­clared by the Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing warn­ings from na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies about ris­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty.