Ke­jan Haynes

T&T has of­fi­cial­ly signed on to Mex­i­co’s le­gal chal­lenge which seeks to hold pri­vate US gun man­u­fac­tur­ers to ac­count for their part in cre­at­ing a flow of arms and am­mu­ni­tion to the re­gion.

Oth­er Cari­com coun­tries, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, The Ba­hamas and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, have al­ready signed on to the case, which is be­ing pur­sued in the US courts, as well.

Speak­ing at a PNM pub­lic meet­ing on March 10, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had not­ed that Mex­i­co made a re­quest to Cari­com to join the le­gal ac­tion, adding at the time that he T&T was ac­tive­ly con­sid­er­ing it, “to test the le­gal­i­ty of those who make those weapons of war that are de­stroy­ing our so­ci­eties—we have to join that fight.”

Row­ley al­so promised to ad­dress the mat­ter with lead­ers at a re­gion­al crime sym­po­sium next month.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne said not much was re­quired from the coun­try to join the case.

“All we are re­quired to do is to pro­vide a diplo­mat­ic note and a clear in­di­ca­tion to the le­gal team that is car­ry­ing the case on be­half of the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment. We’ve done that,” Browne said.

He said it was part and par­cel of a mul­ti-di­men­sion­al ap­proach to ad­dress­ing the scourge of vi­o­lent crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go and across the Cari­com re­gion.

He said it’s im­por­tant to note that T&T is not iso­lat­ed in the fight against crime and vi­o­lent crime.

“A num­ber of heads of gov­ern­ment in our re­gion have agreed that this is one op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to unite, present a com­mon face to the el­e­ments that would be con­tribut­ing to the chal­lenge that we are fac­ing as small so­ci­eties in the West­ern Hemi­sphere,” Browne not­ed.

The Ba­hamas’ Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter first is­sued a state­ment on the mat­ter on Tues­day, an­nounc­ing the coun­tries that would take part in Mex­i­co’s case.

The Mex­i­can com­plaint, it said, cen­tred on whether the Pro­tec­tion of Law­ful Com­merce in Arms Act, which pro­tects gun man­u­fac­tur­ers from civ­il li­a­bil­i­ty if their prod­ucts are used in the com­mis­sion of a crime, ex­tends to harms caused by the crim­i­nal use of weapons in Mex­i­co.

Sev­en ma­jor gun man­u­fac­tur­ers, one gun whole­saler and a dis­trib­u­tor are named in the US$10 bil­lion suit, which has al­ready been dis­missed by a US dis­trict court in Mass­a­chu­setts. Mex­i­co has ap­pealed and this is what it is seek­ing re­gion­al sup­port for.

The an­nounce­ment comes as Cari­com lead­ers are pre­pared to meet for a two-day sym­po­sium to dis­cuss crime as a pub­lic health is­sue.

The re­gion­al sym­po­sium will take place on April 17th and 18th.

Dr Browne yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that so far, there have been com­mit­ments by heads of gov­ern­ment from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, The Ba­hamas, Ja­maica and Guyana, with more ex­pect­ed to sign on in the com­ing weeks.

“I don’t want to be de­fin­i­tive be­cause re­spons­es to our Prime Min­is­ter’s in­vi­ta­tions to his fel­low heads of gov­ern­ment are still com­ing in,” Browne said.

The sym­po­sium came out of talks held dur­ing the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 44th Con­fer­ence of the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in The Ba­hamas.

There’s still no word on if of­fi­cials from the US have been in­vit­ed or will at­tend the sym­po­sium, since much of the dis­cus­sion will fo­cus on the free flow of guns in­to the Caribbean and South Amer­i­ca from the Unit­ed States. But Browne said there is wide­spread agree­ment with the vi­sion for the sym­po­sium.

“Com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice, var­i­ous Cari­com or­gans that are fo­cused on crime, Cari­com Im­pacs, and oth­er en­ti­ties are all com­ing to bear to en­sure that this sym­po­sium is a mean­ing­ful one. It’s not just a talk shop,” Browne said.