Ghetto youths not victims when they kill or sell drugs

However, Hinds said he supported the other part of Tewarie’s statement — in which he called on the East Indian community to take off its blinkers and realise that no group had been spared the brutality of crime in Trinidad and Tobago.

The minister applauded this, pointing out that the UNC had been propagating the view that East Indians were being specifically targeted by criminals, and were the only victims of crime.

Recalling that Basdeo Panday had been saying that it was only the Indian community which was under attack from the criminal element, Hinds said Tewarie’s statement would hopefully cause East Indians to move away from the "sectarian victim syndrome" being fed to them by the Opposition.

However, Hinds said Tewarie scored very low on his other suggestion — that ghetto youths were pawns, "the victims of someone else’s criminality." He said, "You are not a victim when you take up a job to become a hitman; you are not a victim when you take up a gun and murder someone over turf; you are not a victim when you take cocaine to sell it in your neighbourhood to make money for yourself while turning the people in your community into vagrants; you are not a victim when you shoot your mothers, your sisters, when you shoot children in a panyard," the minister stated.

Hinds said the big players "in that nasty (drug) industry," were measured by the source of their supply, the size, the international reach and the structure of their operations. "I can assure you that the records show that persons of all races, religious persuasions, from all parts of the country, can qualify for that dubious title of drug baron," the minister said.

Hinds said he believed that many ghetto youths were misguided, misled and foolish. "But at the end of the day when you take up a gun and decide to kill, you are a willing, active participant," and the law does not see you any differently. "While I sympathise and feel sad to see these unnecessary deaths among our young men, because of the trauma it brings to the communities and to their families, no one can deny that a lot of it is self-imposed," he said.

The minister said he wanted to see law enforcement officers arrest all criminals big, small and medium. He said the only real victim in this war was the piper (cocaine addict) who needed rehabilitation, treatment and care.