Orin Gor­don

On Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der shared his thoughts on the loom­ing ex­tinc­tion of “Africans”—who have sup­pos­ed­ly suc­cumbed to a “men­tal slav­ery” he didn’t prop­er­ly de­scribe.

He most like­ly meant Afro-Trinida­di­ans, but let’s run with what he said. Africa is the most di­verse con­ti­nent. Do we mean Mo­roc­co, Mozam­bique or Malawi? The mas­sive mi­grant in­flow in­to the Span­ish ex­clave of Ceu­ta and the US State De­part­ment’s shock­ing, AI-as­sist­ed ge­o­graph­ic mis­lo­ca­tion of sev­er­al African coun­tries un­der­score all this.

More­over, cer­tain men­tal con­di­tions bear no re­sem­blance to chat­tel slav­ery, which un­told thou­sands were mur­dered try­ing to free them­selves from. A pack of pur­su­ing hounds rip­ping a run­away slave to pieces was raw and very phys­i­cal. Tacky in Ja­maica in 1760 and Cuffy in British Guiana in 1763 took up arms in bloody, ul­ti­mate­ly fu­tile re­sis­tance. The slav­ery we re­mem­bered yes­ter­day was not a con­di­tion from which one could be freed with a ther­a­peu­tic rem­e­dy.

The thing I dis­like about Re­demp­tion Song, an oth­er­wise fab­u­lous song from Bob Mar­ley, is that phrase “men­tal slav­ery”, which tempts some peo­ple in­to in­tel­lec­tu­al lazi­ness. Please miss us with that va­pid­ness on the day we recog­nise our an­ces­tors’ cen­turies-long strug­gle etched in blood and cel­e­brate the most im­por­tant day of their lives.

Alexan­der is bet­ter served il­lu­mi­nat­ing for all of us the di­rec­tion of trav­el of law en­force­ment un­der his gov­ern­ment’s per­pet­u­al state of emer­gency. To the peo­ple he iden­ti­fied as be­ing in dan­ger of ex­tinc­tion, he might have ad­dressed law en­force­ment that’s com­mu­ni­ty-fo­cused and doesn’t jail them in large num­bers, in­def­i­nite­ly and with­out charge.

When Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed and Star Sab­ga were ar­rest­ed and im­pris­oned in late June, I wish that more of us, as a mat­ter of ju­di­cial prin­ci­ple, had sound­ed the alarm about Alexan­der’s pow­er to sign off on ar­rest and in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion with­out charge. Some of us did on so­cial me­dia—on prin­ci­ple, while not seek­ing to min­imise the grave ac­cu­sa­tions. This stance is based on a sim­ple, bedrock ju­di­cial prin­ci­ple…if the state had ev­i­dence that the trio had en­gaged in sedi­tious plot­ting, charge them and look to se­cure con­vic­tions and sen­tences.

What most se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mined the state’s case is that they won a stay of the re­lease of the Hadeeds un­der very strin­gent con­di­tions of house ar­rest, on­ly to lat­er give them un­con­di­tion­al re­lease and com­plete free­dom when Alexan­der lift­ed the pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­der. Over the course of the month, the pub­lic mood shift­ed. The same folks who mock­ing­ly told the de­tainees to suck up some of what poor Tri­nis ex­pe­ri­ence in jail lat­er came to see the con­tra­dic­tions in the state’s ar­gu­ments. The Hadeeds’ case shone a light on the threats to every­one’s per­son­al free­doms. The Hadeeds could be them.

I’ve re­port­ed about coun­tries in which habeas cor­pus and due process pro­tec­tions are ab­sent. We wouldn’t want to see T&T go­ing fur­ther down that road. We can be for­giv­en for hav­ing lim­it­ed trust in a gov­ern­ment that has giv­en full-throat­ed sup­port to US Navy sum­ma­ry ex­e­cu­tions of boat op­er­a­tors they alone de­ter­mined were smug­gling drugs—a fla­grant vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law, re­gard­less of what the T&T At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s co­in­ci­den­tal­ly con­gru­ent le­gal opin­ion states.

On elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance, we, the pub­lic, need to be clear about the steps—when the ev­i­dence is pre­sent­ed and whether a judge signed off on one par­tic­u­lar in­stance of it. It shouldn’t be blan­ket, or the blunt in­stru­ment it seems to have be­come. Two mil­lion phone calls and oth­er pieces of elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion were in­ter­cept­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment be­tween 2018 and 2023, ac­cord­ing to re­cent re­port­ing by Guardian Me­dia’s Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les.

A leaked record­ing of a phone call, pur­port­ed­ly fea­tur­ing the el­der­ly la­dy en­gaged in a racism-fu­elled di­a­tribe, is the on­ly piece of al­leged ev­i­dence from which the pub­lic can judge the sound­ness of the case for de­ten­tion. The rant was ug­ly, but it’s hard to find au­thor­i­ta­tive opin­ions that thought it met the high bar set by the de­ten­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment says the case con­tin­ues. It’s no con­tra­dic­tion to sup­port them in fight­ing se­ri­ous crime while be­ing op­posed to a sin­gle min­is­ter hav­ing the pow­er to lock up peo­ple at his sole dis­cre­tion, with­out charge or ev­i­dence. Leave Alexan­der the Great in the his­to­ry books.