Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Founder and di­rec­tor of the Black Agen­da Project Dr David Muham­mad be­lieves re­mov­ing il­le­gal firearms from the streets will make a dent in the crime rate.

“T&T has the sixth-high­est crime rate in the world and there are more than 200 coun­tries on plan­et earth, so clear­ly if some kind of dent is made in the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal firearms it will have an im­me­di­ate ef­fect on the mur­der rate,” he said.

Mo­hammed, who was speak­ing at a sem­i­nar host­ed by the Black Agen­da Project at the Kwame Ture Ed­u­ca­tion and De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre, Laven­tille, yes­ter­day re­ferred to the World Pop­u­la­tion Re­view’s rank­ing of T&T as hav­ing the sixth-high­est crime rate in the world.

Muham­mad said it was not the youths from low­er-in­come, high risk neigh­bour­hoods who im­port il­le­gal guns but the “big fish.”

“All of these guns that are on the streets were once le­gal some­where else and some­one who is in le­git­i­mate busi­ness over­seas is do­ing il­le­gal busi­ness lo­cal­ly. All of these youths you see with guns in the ghet­toes, they did not take a plane and go to Amer­i­ca, pack a suit­case of guns and bring it in,” he said.

Muham­mad urged young peo­ple of African de­scent to have faith in them­selves and to know and un­der­stand African his­to­ry and its con­tri­bu­tion to the world. He re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that Africa was the heart of world civ­i­liza­tion once and that should in­spire black youths to stay away from crime and to be­come suc­cess­ful.