WHAT NEXT, UNCLE SAM?

The reported chaining of a teenaged Trinidadian girl by United States Immigration officers on her arrival in New York last weekend where she had gone to attend a religious crusade, along with the alleged refusal of the authorities to allow a friend to see and speak directly with her, is the latest act of big bully America. Under normal circumstances, a representative of the Trinidad and Tobago Embassy in the United States would seek to find out from the US State Department why the crushing treatment of a TT national who was reportedly taken aside on arrival and reportedly, chained to a chair. But these are not normal times and we can be certain that the US Government would have no difficulty in simply ignoring us. It is difficult to understand that Trinidad and Tobago and the United States of America are nations with a history of being friends, and clearly this is not the way for one friendly State to treat the national of another friendly State save and except there in an overriding security concern. But if there was a question of security,  was this only discovered when the girl arrived?  What was this all about?

Was any attempt made to contact the person(s) with whom she was expected to stay, or the Christian group, the Deliverance Temple, whose religious crusade she had flown in to attend? Instead, United States officials treated in disgusting fashion a 19-year old TT girl, reportedly on her way to a religious exercise. This is the third time in two months that United States authorities have arbitrarily detained Trinidad and Tobago nationals.  In late December two BWIA West Indies Airways pilots, who had flown in to New York and Washington, one at the controls of a BWIA aircraft, had their movements restricted and forbidden from leaving the country because names, similar to theirs, had appeared on a ‘no fly’ list. The restrictions were later lifted. We appreciate the security concerns that were triggered by the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Nonetheless, the United States of America should consciously seek to rid itself of the paranoia which has gripped it since then, and at least make an attempt to go about its normal business without conjuring up threatening ghosts at every airport.

European nations which had suffered severe infrastructural damage along with the loss of tens of millions of its citizens during World War 11 went about the physical and psychological rebuilding process immediately the war had ended. Is it that the needless paranoia, part of it induced, which has gripped the US since September 11 resulted from its being the first in recent history  that the US had experienced the physical horrors of war, undeclared or otherwise, on its own soil! But whatever the reason for this paranoia, can the Government of the most powerful nation and Empire on earth, advance this as reason enough for the physical and humiliating restraints imposed on a clearly defenceless Trinidad and Tobago teenaged girl who had gone to the US merely to sing along and pray at a Deliverance Temple with Americans and others of her faith? United States officials at New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport consciously subjected her to shabby and shameful treatment the like of which we have never handed out nor would ever consider handing out to an American citizen coming to Trinidad and Tobago on a mission similar to that of the TT teenager, or at all. What other humiliating surprises does the US have in store for our citizens, who have broken no known law?