The trauma of the Paria calamity has affected not only the participants themselves, their fellow employees, their families and the companies involved, it also smeared the public perception of what passes for governance in TT as well. Four men died.
Why did no one go to their aid? Expert professional divers — the best in the country, knowing the risk to their own lives, volunteered to do so.
It seemed as though the whole country was traumatised with a combination of shock, shame and sorrow.
Back in 1980, TT ratified the UN Convention on the Human Rights and the acknowledgement of and respect for that convention was almost automatic. It was as though it were a natural “Trini thing” but hitherto hidden. Teachers started to discuss it even in primary schools as though it were a natural part of Trini culture. And in a way, it was.
As is observed in school conflicts, Trini parents can be as fierce in defence of their rights and those of their children as they are in protection of their property rights, and we are seeing a healthy and substantial growth in identification with and defence of community rights. If people don’t belong to the community, they find themselves in, they find a community to belong to and to be a part of. It is an instinctive survival mechanism built into human DNA.
The principle is simple: It acknowledges that something good is lodged in our subconscious that impels us to help fellow humans — especially those from our own community that we perceive are in peril. Even if we have no personal connection with them, a lost child alone and crying, an infant heading for a river, a woman in labour, an elderly person confused, bewildered and wandering vaguely into traffic, or any identified member of the community obviously in need of help and not a threat to our personal safety, arouses the humane impulse to help.
But as the old saying goes “evil lurks in the minds of man,” so to protect the good Samaritans from those who would take advantage of them, laws have been enacted in a number of countries and in various jurisdictions to protect them from being sued if anything goes awry and although “the road to hell is paved with true, true good intentions,” it all ends in a legal snake pit.
Most people are familiar with France’s good Samaritan Code Pénal, which defines a good Samaritan statute as a law that makes it mandatory for a citizen to come to the aid of another who is exposed to serious physical harm — if there is no danger or risk of injury to the rescuer.
After the death of Princess Diana, when the paparazzi showed no intention of assisting her, it appeared to have awakened the public’s interest in the concept of good-Samaritan laws. The law exists not just in France, but there are similar laws in Australia, a number of states in America and Canada. What makes it interesting to TT is the relationship between common-law and civil-law systems, which we have been discussing in this column over the previous five months.
There is a di
