“Trial by media,” with its old evocations of overkill
coverage dooming chances for fairness in the court, likely
gained new meaning in T&T this week.
It may now be applied to what media viewers and readers have
been put through in a single week. Thus, the “trial”
may now be seen as the ordeal suffered by people’s mental
digestive systems from colliding and concentrated media images.
From California came Michael Jackson. The Thriller appeared
in pyjamas, his face bleached white almost suggesting an image
made familiar by Minshall mas and now daily projected on Gayelle
TV.
Michael Jackson was as compelling a figure of courtroom drama
as the moustachioed, bespectacled medical professor, captured
by the cameras in San Fernando.
The enormously-accomplished surgeon, no longer himself a defendant,
spoke with the practised precision of a man assured that his
words of scientific detail are closely attended to.
Dissecting and analysing his own experience as the subject
of investigation, indictment and prosecution, he seemed to
diagnose massive failure of tissues and organs in the criminal
justice system.
The image, however, was of the doctor of medical science turned
voluble patriot, in a black shirt down which a shocking red
tie with diagonal black and white stripes hung from his neck
like a broadsword.
It was a declaration by Vijay Naraynsingh for something beyond
the operating theatres, lecture halls and meeting rooms. Imprinted
on the public mind is the familiar image of his wife, Seeromani,
handcuffed between two policewomen.
For the sake of the country whose flag he wore, the professor
said in words implying their own exclamation mark, he was
now ready to sacrifice himself and his family.
Meanwhile, in Port-of-Spain, the cameras were feeding on another
celebrity show at the Hall of Justice. The setting was that
incomparable crossroads of state power and majesty—the
corner of Knox and Abercromby.
Facing the Hall of Justice is the Army headquarters. Across
from them both is the Red House; and Woodford Square, forever
the assembly place for public witness of history.
It was here, as dusk fell on August 1, 1990, that history
had happened. It was still, the streets cleared of traffic
and people, as if for the making of a movie.
The action was the climactic ending of the siege of the Red
House.
Inside the Parliament chamber and elsewhere, live and dead
bodies had been held hostage for five days.
From the roof of the Hall of Justice, a soldier barked orders
through a bullhorn. One by one, Muslimeen urban guerrillas,
each with his carbine held high, marched out of the Red House
and into the intersection.
In the choreography instructed by the bullhorn, each Muslimeen
stamped his boots to a halt, lay down his weapon, then spread
himself flat on the asphalt.
At once, a squad of dark-clad soldiers ran onto the scene,
took the weapon, and rolled the Muslimeen over as they searched
him, then led him away.
I had witnessed it all from a ground-floor window of the Colonial
Life building which had itself been transformed into a fortress.
Bristling with machine guns trained on the Red House, and
crawling with soldiers from the rooftop down, the darkened
building was under the command of an army captain who genially
introduced himself and told reporters to make ourselves at
home.
This flashback was prompted by images of helmeted police Swat
teams at the Knox and Abercromby corner and surroundings,
reports of sharpshooters on nearby rooftops, and traffic diversions.
Nearly 15 years later, the State is still flexing its muscle
against the Muslimeen, inside the courts and out. Once again,
it is doing so without effect more telling than to confirm
its possession of such muscle.
Over 10 weeks, the Muslimeen leader had been on trial for
conspiracy to murder. His comings and goings at the Hall of
Justice were covered as the picturesque entrances and exits
of a colourful tribal chieftain.
Summing up, Justice Mark Mohammed stressed that the events
of 1990 had not been on trial before him. Indeed, the case
to be proved beyond reasonable doubt so turned on “he
said” versus “he said” as to leave a sufficient
majority of jurors unswayed one way or another.
What was on trial was what the media projected. It was the
assertion of a tribal nationalism marked by its manners, its
modes, its clothes, its successful diplomatic and other relations
with other “tribes,” and its internal rules of order
administered by the absolute authority of its Imam.
Is Trinidad and Tobago big enough to accommodate this, without
presuming the rules of its post-colonial state should prevail?
That was the question reverberating outside the court.
What was and is up for debate is whether recognisable aspects
of Muslim sharia law could be accepted here, if only for application
to those assumed voluntarily subject to it.
Last week, too, the papers showed an Iranian court official
flogging the bare back of a multiple rapist. Other acts of
popular vengeance took place against the culprit, before he
was hanged slowly from a crane.
It came out in court that Muslimeen men could get “strokes”
for violating Islamic laws. The Imam himself invoked the doctrine
of fasifilard by which an offender could suffer the penalty
of exile or loss of limbs.
Maybe T&T media consumers have become numbed into acceptance
of “gang-related” killings as a kind of internal
cleansing, part of the natural order of things.
Two such killings among the Muslimeen “gang,” then,
need pose no threat to any rule of law subscribed to by the
T&T State.
Or maybe not. Maybe it’s time to send a message that
such localised taking of life, so easily described in headlines
as an “execution,” is a national security threat
to and an offence against the self-esteem of T&T.
Still, however, there remains the daunting task proving to
the satisfaction of Justice Mohammed’s court, exactly
who called the shots.
