SASCHA WIL­SON

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah is warn­ing of many more in­ci­dents like last Thurs­day’s Beetham protest be­cause of in­equal­i­ty and un­fair­ness in soce­ity.

Com­ment­ing on the Beetham Gar­dens vi­o­lent protest last Thurs­day dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at MSJ’s San Fer­nan­do head­quar­ters yes­ter­day Ab­du­lah said the MSJ does not con­done acts of vi­o­lence against cit­i­zens “so we cer­tain­ly don’t con­done peo­ple throw­ing stones at per­sons ve­hi­cles.”

Ab­du­lah added, “At the same time, how­ev­er, that we do not con­done that ac­tiv­i­ty we al­so do not con­done the kind of dis­parag­ing state­ments made about the res­i­dents of the Beetham by per­sons in so­ci­ety who them­selves are not ex­em­plars.”

So that there are politi­cians who they at­tack per­sons on the Beetham who over the years have used and abused those res­i­dents as vote banks rather than de­vel­op­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and de­vel­op­ing those cit­i­zens of those com­mu­ni­ties.

“There are al­so per­son in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty who, as busi­ness peo­ple, refuse to em­ploy peo­ple from the Beetham be­cause on their ap­pli­ca­tion let­ter they put as the lo­ca­tion of their home as a res­i­dent of the Beetham and there­fore they get dis­crim­i­nat­ed against and they get ex­ploit­ed on that ba­sis.”

He said un­less and un­til eco­nom­ic poli­cies that gen­er­ate fair and eq­ui­table op­por­tu­ni­ties for every sin­gle cit­i­zen of this coun­try are im­ple­ment­ed there will be many more in­ci­dents like last Thurs­day’s protest. “Un­less and un­til we get a fair, just and eq­ui­table so­ci­ety we are go­ing to get these ex­plo­sions of anger and pain and frus­tra­tion. We don’t con­done vi­o­lence but we can see the fac­tors that gen­er­ate this kind of be­hav­iour,” Ab­du­lah said.

He added that those who con­trolled eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal pow­er from In­de­pen­dence to now have failed this coun­try.