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Christine Kangaloo, president of Trinidad and Tobago makes a speech during the Opening Ceremony of the 2023 Youth Commonwealth Games at Hasely Crawford Stadium on Aug. 04, 2023 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
Photo by Matt McNulty/Getty Images for Commonwealth Sport
For the second time in almost eight months, two different governments have placed Trinidad under a state of emergency to beat back what authorities say is a troubling spike in gruesome killings and an increase in gangland activities, including plots to assassinate top officials.
President Christine Kangaloo signed the state of emergency declaration early Friday, giving police and the military special and additional powers to detain known gangsters and criminals. The emergency measures do not include a nighttime curfew or major restrictions on citizens’ movement.
In a statement Friday, Police Chief Allister Guevarro said intelligence reports have confirmed coordinated plans by a “hazardous criminal network” operating inside state prisons to disrupt the peace in the country. Their plans include targeted assassination attacks on police, judicial, and other officials linked to law enforcement and state prosecutions and prison officers, the commissioner stated, noting that funding is derived from a range of violent organized criminal activities, including high-value robberies, extortions, kidnappings, and their infiltration of state-funded programs involving public work contracts.
“The scale, coordination, and internal facilitation of these activities indicate an operational capability that exceeds the containment capacity of conventional law enforcement measures. As such, a comprehensive and immediate strategic response was required to safeguard national stability and protect public officials and institutions,” he stated.
Justifying the move by the government to citizens, Attorney General John Jeremie said authorities were “left with no choice but to take the most dramatic action available under the constitution. We have done that, and we make no apologies for it. Our intelligence reports suggest, and they strongly suggest with a degree of high confidence, that the recent murder of a state prosecutor was directly linked to a specific gang.”
The last SOE ended in April; the chief argued that the last one was directed more at gang violence, while the latest is being held to deal with a particular threat. It involves people who are forming themselves into an organized syndicate. I want to make that absolutely clear. This has nothing to do with gang violence.”
Security forces have already raided state prisons and have removed several inmates suspected of being involved in the plot to disrupt life in the federation with Tobago, including the execution of top government and state officials, the chief stated. Citizens in the country have lived through several of these special security exercises in recent decades including the July 1990 attempted coup that had resulted in the deaths of a few dozen people, gunshot injuries to then Prime Minister Ray Robinson, arson attacks against businesses in the city and the storming of parliament, the state television station and other entities by an Islamic gang, upset about rising inflation and other ills in society.
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