Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

This coun­try has not yet learned suf­fi­cient­ly from the events of Ju­ly 27, 1990, says for­mer min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an who was among those tak­en hostage in the Red House on that date.

“I re­call every minute of the or­deal, I’ll nev­er for­get it, it is with me al­ways,” said Dook­er­an who was then the Na­tion­al Al­liance For Re­con­struc­tion Gov­ern­ment’s (NAR) plan­ning min­is­ter.

Dook­er­an spoke on Wednes­day’s 33rd ob­ser­vance of the coup at­tempt by the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen on Ju­ly 27, 1990, when they at­tempt­ed to over­throw the NAR gov­ern­ment.

The Mus­limeen fire bombed TTPS head­quar­ters on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain. Forty-two of them stormed the Red House, tak­ing Prime Min­is­ter ANR Robin­son and most of his Cab­i­net hostage, as well as oth­er peo­ple.

Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr led 72 oth­er in­sur­gents, tak­ing hostages at TTT.

Af­ter a six-day siege in which 24 peo­ple were killed and many oth­ers in­jured, the mus­limeen sur­ren­dered.

The in­sur­gents beat and shot Robin­son. Dook­er­an, who was among hostages tak­en, was re­leased Ju­ly 28 and chaired the Cab­i­net as an amnesty agree­ment was bro­kered with the in­sur­gents.

Dook­er­an said to date, “My im­pres­sion is that we haven’t learned suf­fi­cient­ly from the events of 1990—from the point of view of se­cu­ri­ty laps­es that may have oc­curred at the time and whether they’ve been prop­er­ly and trans­par­ent­ly cor­rect­ed, and from the point of view of so­ci­o­log­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions of that event in the psy­che of our peo­ple with re­spect to is­sues of high trea­son.”

He added, “The per­mis­sive­ness of the so­ci­ety to events of this na­ture is still very tol­er­ant and, to some ex­tent, hasn’t been ad­dressed in the na­tion­al are­na.”

Dook­er­an said it al­so has not been learned that it was an his­tor­i­cal mo­ment in which sev­er­al vic­tims died.

He said all these mat­ters are linked to the is­sue of po­lit­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty, po­lit­i­cal ac­count­abil­i­ty and po­lit­i­cal man­age­ment.

He felt ob­vi­ous­ly there has been fall-out in so­ci­ety and dis­charge of democ­ra­cy.

Dook­er­an said the min­i­mum that can be done is to “un­earth the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port on the event and even though in my view it didn’t cov­er the is­sues I raised or oth­er crit­i­cal mat­ters, there are still sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions which didn’t see the light of day”.

The event is ex­pect­ed be marked by the Par­lia­ment to­day. But Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials did not give any de­tails yes­ter­day and their promised re­turn calls nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

Ever­s­ley:
Re­mem­ber hostages, fam­i­lies prop­er­ly

NAR mem­ber Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, who was among the hostages, is do­ing his tra­di­tion­al walk from Ari­ma to the Red House.

He has called for a prop­er of­fi­cial func­tion to be held an­nu­al­ly and for com­pen­sa­tion for hostages and fam­i­lies of vic­tims who died.

He said there should be an of­fi­cial func­tion at­tend­ed by Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion and their lead­ers, plus hostages and rel­a­tives of de­ceased vic­tims.

Ever­s­ley leaves Ari­ma at 5 am and is due to ar­rive to lay a wreath at the Red House by 10 am to­day.

He will be ac­com­pa­nied by a mu­sic truck with ca­lyp­son­ian Crazy (Ed­win Ay­oung) singing Ever­s­ley’s com­po­si­tion Re­mem­ber 1990.

Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader Kirt Sin­nette said he and oth­er COP mem­bers will meet Ever­s­ley at South Quay, Port-of-Spain, and walk with him to the Red House.

Ever­s­ley said Chap­ter 11 of the CoE re­port—which urged that hostages and fam­i­lies of vic­tims be com­pen­sat­ed and that Ju­ly 27, 1990 be of­fi­cial­ly re­mem­bered must be im­ple­ment­ed.

Ever­s­ley, who was in the pub­lic gallery when the event erupt­ed, was hit on the head by mus­limeen mem­bers.

“I’m scarred for life not on­ly with that, but I’m haunt­ed by rec­ol­lec­tion of (Par­lia­ment clerk) Lor­raine Ca­ballero bleed­ing to death in front of me. She was shot in the bel­ly when they stormed the Par­lia­ment that evening and she lay in front of me, bleed­ing from the mouth un­til she died around 11 pm.” See Page 12