AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Ac­tivist Wen­dell Ever­s­ley is point­ing fin­gers at hold­ers of pub­lic of­fice for al­leged­ly aid­ing and abet­ting in hu­man traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

He made the al­le­ga­tion yes­ter­day, as a group of cit­i­zens gath­ered at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, in sol­i­dar­i­ty to re­ject hu­man traf­fick­ing in all its forms in T&T.

The is­sue has come to the fore re­cent­ly af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley claimed a 2022 US State De­part­ment Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons re­port had fin­gered a UNC Par­lia­men­tar­i­an in the ac­tiv­i­ty. For­mer UNC mem­bers Dr De­vant Ma­haraj and Vas­ant Bharath have al­so sup­port­ed Row­ley’s claims, say­ing they were aware of the in­volve­ment of a mem­ber in such ac­tiv­i­ty and the par­ty’s hi­er­ar­chy was al­so aware but turned a blind eye.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has since launched a probe in­to the claims.

Dur­ing the demon­stra­tion yes­ter­day, Ever­s­ley said, “What we are see­ing to­day is a set of blast­ed hyp­ocrites walk­ing up and down as politi­cians in our coun­try, sit­ting in our high­est court, mak­ing rules for you and I. They are stink and dut­ty [sic] and they are nas­ti­ness in the clos­et.” Be­fore the group en­gaged in a march around the Red House sev­en times, ac­tivist Jen­nifer Fred­er­ick asked cit­i­zens to ed­u­cate them­selves and change how they view women in so­ci­ety.

“We some­times turn a blind eye to what is pros­ti­tu­tion and hu­man traf­fick­ing. You might see a young girl and she have three, four man and they tell them­selves, ‘she wot­less, she rel [sic] like man’ and may not know she has a pimp at home pimp­ing her out. But we just watch it as ‘she is hot girl, she has tat­too, she like that, she has pierc­ings’ and not un­der­stand­ing there’s a psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect be­hind it, or some eco­nom­ic rea­son be­hind it or some men­tal rea­son as to why this is hap­pen­ing,” she said.

Last Fri­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced that a spe­cial ad­vis­er from the US gov­ern­ment has been re­cruit­ed to as­sist with in­ves­ti­gat­ing cas­es of hu­man traf­fick­ing and bring­ing lo­cal of­fend­ers to jus­tice.

While Ever­s­ley com­mend­ed this, he is plead­ing with cit­i­zens to not al­low peo­ple they know or their elect­ed lead­ers to get away with such crimes.

“I want to see men and women of in­tegri­ty in our high­est of­fice in our coun­try. We have to stand up for it. We can­not say that we are PNM till we dead or UNC till we dead. We have to say we are Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian till we dead and that coun­try comes first.”