Kidnappers target Indian community

THE EDITOR: Allow me to respond to a letter written by Garvin Walters, which was published in the Newsday on Thursday December 18, 2003. If one reads Walters’ letter one would get the impression that he believes that the Opposition is responsible for crime. Only a high degree of political bias or a delusional mind could arrive at such a warped conclusion. Reading Walters’ letter, one would think that the UNC was still in office and the PNM was in Opposition. After 24 months of PNM rule, they must accept responsibility for governing the nation. Garvin Walters like many in the Port-of-Spain-based business community believe that if the Opposition supports the Police Bills, a magic wand will be waved and crime will vanish. They believe that all is needed is the passage of the Police Bills and Trinidad will be transformed into a virtual paradise. The Police Bill, itself seeks to amend the Constitution. Why not address Constitutional reform on a whole instead of plugging for a piecemeal approach via the Police Bills.

What Garvin Walters fails to mention, however, is that kidnapping followed the PNM into office. That is an indisputable, inescapable and irrefutable fact. Kidnappings for ransom started in March of 2002, just two months after Mr Robinson selected the PNM to office. In 2002 there were 27 kidnappings for ransom and in 2003, 47, all under the watch of the PNM. Walters must explain why on September 5, 2002, one moth before the October 7, 2002 general election, kidnappings stopped. They re-started on October 22, 2002 with the kidnapping of Kallawatie Godek. During this when there was a lull in kidnappings, the only person kidnapped was the brother of UNC candidate for Tunapuna Carlos John. Was that a coincidence? Garvin Walters must also tell us what he makes of the statement by Jamaat leader Yasin Abu Bakr in the Sunday Express of December 14, 2003 when he admitted that his organisation was responsible for the PNM winning the last general election. He also admitted that the Jamaat played a large role in stifling the country’s crime rate just weeks before the October 2002 general election.

These statements by Mr Bakr constitute an admission that the Jamaat has a tremendous influence on the criminal element and the crime rate, and that they used this influence to reduce crime thereby letting the PNM off the hook in the run-up to last year’s general elections. If the Jamaat could reduce crime, something which the PNM seems incapable of doing, it could then be assumed that they could also increase it or start it up again. Mr Walters fails to make this sort of in-depth and detailed analysis because he is steeped in bias both racial and political. On the kidnappings of Indians, Walters contradicts himself (a sure sign of intellectual confusion). He says that it is unfortunate that Panday and the UNC are linking crime to race and then contradicts himself by admitting that it is indeed true that the majority of victims of kidnapping are in fact Indians.

What is the reality? The reality is that of the 27 kidnappings for ransom in 2002 and the 47 thus far in 2003, almost 80 percent of victims have been Indian. On Monday October 20, 2003 in a story in the Express, it was reported that a person seeking asylum in the United States for fear that he would be killed, admitted that a deliberate decision was taken by kidnappers to target the Indian community. Did Walters read that? Does he do research before he writes? Finally, Walters concludes his letter by asking for DNA testing to be made available in TT. Ignorance it is said is bliss. The Panday administration passed the DNA Identification Act of 2000 (Act 27 of 2000). To date the Manning administration has failed to implement that Act. If Prime Minister Manning were serious about crime, he would have implemented this Act. Alas, according to the Prime Minister (at Howard University) kidnappings in TT are bogus. Wither TT?

MARTIN MAHARAJ
Curepe