RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

Po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Umar Ab­dul­lah has been charged in con­nec­tion with Sun­day’s ‘Push Back Two’ demon­stra­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain, where he was among 12 peo­ple de­tained by po­lice. The 11 oth­ers have, how­ev­er, been re­leased.

Po­lice sources last evening con­firmed that Ab­dul­lah was charged and added that al­though the 11 oth­ers were re­leased, “charges may al­so be forth­com­ing” pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a post on the First Wave Move­ment’s Face­book page, how­ev­er, Ab­dul­lah was be­ing “false­ly charged by po­lice for stand­ing up for the rights of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go on Sun­day 16th Jan­u­ary 2022.”

The post said: “The po­lice, who has a his­to­ry of false ac­cu­sa­tions, are al­leg­ing that Bro. Umar Ab­dul­lah in­cit­ed vi­o­lence when in fact it was the po­lice that was met­ing out vi­o­lence to­wards the peo­ple of Trinidad & To­ba­go. Bro. Umar will how­ev­er fight this mat­ter and has no re­grets for tak­ing a stand for the peo­ple of Trinidad & To­ba­go.”

Ab­dul­lah did not an­swer calls to his phone last night.

The walk at­tract­ed hun­dreds — in­clud­ing chil­dren. How­ev­er, the ac­tiv­i­ties came to an abrupt end af­ter po­lice used tear gas to dis­perse a crowd they claimed be­came un­ruly and re­fused to fol­low in­struc­tions to dis­burse af­ter the event had ac­tu­al­ly end­ed. The po­lice al­leged that par­tic­i­pants be­gan act­ing er­rat­ic and hurled mis­siles at of­fi­cers, who had to use tear gas to dis­perse the un­ruly crowd.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, 12 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and many oth­ers, in­clud­ing chil­dren, were left nurs­ing in­juries.

How­ev­er, Push Back com­mit­tee chair­man and busi­ness­man Robert Amar dis­put­ed the po­lice re­port that the par­tic­i­pants were un­ruly.

The walk com­menced at 11.15 am and end­ed at 12.30 pm and Amar said it was or­gan­ised to get peo­ple back on a health con­science move­ment.

In the first Push Back on No­vem­ber 30 last year, Amar said 35 peo­ple were de­tained and charged for breach­ing the pub­lic health or­di­nance, specif­i­cal­ly gath­er­ing in groups more than ten. The 35 were de­tained for 16 hours.

Mean­while, in a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers’ Union (TI­WU) con­demned what they de­scribed as the de­spi­ca­ble be­hav­iour of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and, by ex­ten­sion, the Gov­ern­ment.

“What was sup­posed to be a peace­ful demon­stra­tion with fam­i­lies, the na­tion’s gov­ern­ment turned it in­to a ri­ot and seem­ing­ly thought it best to bring out a ri­ot squad. The TTPS was out­fit­ted with ri­ot gear, armed with large guns and tear gas. Is that the mes­sage we want to send out to the world? That a peace­ful demon­stra­tion with fam­i­lies in a sa­van­nah can cause the gov­ern­ment to use the re­sources of the ITPS to in­stil fear to bring the na­tion in­to sub­mis­sion?” the union stat­ed.

“Look­ing at this be­hav­iour through the eyes of the world, could be de­fined as the most em­bar­rass­ing per­for­mance of an ed­u­cat­ed bunch of peo­ple. This was not an ex­pec­ta­tion of those with three de­grees and a long list of qual­i­fi­ca­tion. What hap­pened to the rights of cit­i­zens in this coun­try? Are we on the in­cep­tion of dic­ta­tor­ship? Com­rades and cit­i­zens, this ac­tion met­ed out to peace­ful cit­i­zens by the gov­ern­ment is un­ac­cept­able. Es­pe­cial­ly since their on­ly cry was on­ly to seek an­swers and be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard in the best in­ter­est of all,” it added.

The union has as­sured that it stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with its mem­bers who par­tic­i­pat­ed at the peace­ful demon­stra­tion “in de­fence of their rights for bread and jus­tice and the right to pri­va­cy and re­fusal on health is­sue that is not in the best in­ter­est of one as an in­di­vid­ual.”

The union al­so con­demned the al­leged ar­rest and abuse of one of its mem­bers, who it said stood with his com­rades and peace­ful­ly demon­strat­ed his non-com­pli­ance to Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tial ut­ter­ances to fur­lough un­vac­ci­nat­ed work­ers on Jan­u­ary 17, 2022.

“The ex­e­cu­tion of these state­ments can cause grave hard­ships on fam­i­lies notwith­stand­ing the ef­fects on their men­tal, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal health,” the union said.

It called on the Gov­ern­ment, to­geth­er with the TTPS, to apol­o­gise “to these in­no­cent cit­i­zens for their cal­lous­ness and bla­tant dis­re­gard to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right of the work­ing class in this na­tion.”