Ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley says he is con­cerned that Trinidad and To­ba­go is head­ing to­wards be­com­ing a po­lice state, fol­low­ing new State of Emer­gency (SoE) reg­u­la­tions that pro­hib­it pub­lic protests with­in 500 me­tres of 15 des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing the Par­lia­ment.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Ever­s­ley de­scribed the re­stric­tions as an at­tack on democ­ra­cy and free­dom of ex­pres­sion, warn­ing that cit­i­zens’ rights were be­ing erod­ed.

“What I am fright­ened about is if Trinidad and To­ba­go is now be­com­ing a po­lice state and the in­sti­tu­tion must be in­de­pen­dent,” he said.

Ever­s­ley ques­tioned whether law en­force­ment agen­cies were act­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly and ar­gued that Par­lia­ment be­longs to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The ac­tivist said the re­stric­tions were not on­ly an at­tack on him per­son­al­ly but on the wider pop­u­la­tion.

Ever­s­ley al­so crit­i­cised po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, say­ing cit­i­zens were be­ing mis­led.

“His­to­ry has a thing of re­peat­ing it­self. But you know what this coun­try is lack­ing now? Lead­ers talk­ing the truth. We see lead­ers to­day ly­ing to us pub­licly,” he said.

He ar­gued that protests out­side the Par­lia­ment have long been part of the coun­try’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tion and point­ed to demon­stra­tions held by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) out­side of the Par­lia­ment while they were in op­po­si­tion.

Ever­s­ley said sup­port­ers of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion reg­u­lar­ly protest­ed out­side Par­lia­ment and the Hy­att Re­gency when Par­lia­ment was tem­porar­i­ly housed there.

“We must not for­get the past ten years. Did we have re­stric­tion in protest­ing in front of the Par­lia­ment?” he asked.

He re­called oc­ca­sions when sup­port­ers of the then-op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gath­ered out­side Par­lia­ment to protest and chant against the for­mer gov­ern­ment.

The UNC al­so pre­vi­ous­ly held pro-gov­ern­ment gath­er­ings out­side the Par­lia­ment dur­ing the 2010-2015 term.

Ever­s­ley said he has con­sis­tent­ly crit­i­cised both ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties over the years.

“For ten years, I have a say­ing that PNM is a prob­lem, UNC is not the so­lu­tion,” he said.

He al­so ques­tioned the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the re­stric­tions, say­ing gov­ern­ment ex­pla­na­tions for the SoE have changed over time.

Re­fer­ring to a re­cent protest out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Ever­s­ley main­tained that demon­stra­tors com­plied with po­lice in­struc­tions and that there was no ag­gres­sion or use of pro­fane lan­guage.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has re­ject­ed claims that po­lice are se­lec­tive­ly en­forc­ing protest reg­u­la­tions dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

Speak­ing in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said of­fi­cers had fa­cil­i­tat­ed nu­mer­ous demon­stra­tions fol­low­ing the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing death of Joshua Sama­roo and on­ly in­ter­vened when or­gan­is­ers al­leged­ly breached emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

Gue­var­ro al­so main­tained that cit­i­zens do not need per­mis­sion to protest but must no­ti­fy the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and com­ply with the law.

De­spite the re­stric­tions, Ever­s­ley said he in­tends to con­tin­ue his an­nu­al Ju­ly 27 walk to Par­lia­ment, which com­mem­o­rates the at­tempt­ed coup of 1990.