THE HYATT Regency Trinidad is a plush, four-star hotel. But for the England cricket team, playing here for the first time in 14 years, it might as well be a prison.
On Monday, the team was sequestered in their Port of Spain hotel after the bullet-riddled body of Wendell Walker, 47, was found, at around 1.20 am, yards away from its entrance. The development all but confirmed the sagacity of warnings that had been issued to the team prior. Players had been advised not to leave for non-sporting matters and to move around only with a police escort.
No matter how you count, interpret and spin the statistics – which suggest we have recorded just under two murders per day for 2023 – crime has clearly brought this country’s international reputation into disrepute.
Even before this week, the British government’s official travel advisory for its nationals warned of “a high level of violent crime,” “gang-related attacks” around the city centre of Port of Spain, the “risk of armed robbery,” as well as “sexual assault and robbery, kidnapping for ransom, rape and murder.” Do not expect that to change soon. British media outlets carried alarmed headlines about this week’s incident which undoubtedly did damage to this country’s image as a tourist destination or otherwise.
And speaking of image, the convening of an “extra-ordinary” meeting of the National Security Council on Monday, chaired by the Prime Minister, came ostensibly in the wake of a police-involved shooting at Courts Megastore in San Juan last Sunday. But the members of the council could not have been unaware of the equally alarming implications of both incidents this week.
What is ironic is that, also on Monday, Fitzgerald Hinds urged the country to adopt a “whole-of-society” approach to fighting crime.
As he signed a deal with diplomats for the funding and construction, at long last, of a new $95 million forensic science centre to be built at Farm Road, St Joseph, the Minister of National Security could not help but compare us with another country, China, stating the homicide rate there was just 30,000 deaths in a 1.4 billion population.
“How is that society different to TT?” he asked, haplessly.
Did the minister mean dictatorship is the solution? Or was he suggesting there is something in the Chinese identity not present here, where many have genetic ties to China? Surely he knows the reason for China’s miraculous statistics is more likely to be because they are untrue: the Chinese government does not fully release information.
Long before Monday it has been obvious a “whole-of-society” approach is needed.
But if Dr Rowley and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar cannot even sit down to talk, how can terrified and besieged citizens be expected to do any better
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