With a murder toll hovering just below 500, and we’re
not even into December yet, it is quite obvious that the toll
will cross clear past the 501 mark, a record that is precious
to us all in the realm of cricket for much more noble and
genteel reasons.
How far the murder toll will reach we cannot predict right
now, but what does this mean for next year, and the year after
that?
Will we try to break this year’s new record also, and
just keep spiralling out of control, breaking successive murder
records? When will enough be enough?
Now, this is not to lament, complain or bemoan the high numbers
or to berate the police or Ministry of National Security for
the crime rate.
This is merely a question of how many more must die before
we begin to be really serious about dealing with it?
When will we bring back a feeling of safety and security to
the daily lives of ordinary citizens, those who are not flanked
by outriders and wailing sirens and heavily- armed men hanging
out of Jeeps guarding them?
I am talking about the average Joe or Jim, Sooklal or Gopaul,
who has to take the daily commute at City Gate and traverse
the mean streets of downtown Port-of-Spain, as part of the
every-day routine for work, school, or recreation?
Who is to protect the spectators at a cricket match in Aranguez
Savannah when a gunman walks up to the crowd and shoots at
a target?
Who is to protect the little child who was shot by a stray
bullet, caught up in a war that is entirely not her own and
one which she will never even begin to comprehend?
Where is the protection for the small man or the little people
of this country who see their friends, relatives, sons, lovers,
fathers, brothers in a passing parade at the mortuary of the
Forensic Sciences Complex and their one moment of glory as
a newspaper headline or a Homicide Bureau statistic?
Keep killing
What happens to them? Who cares about them any more? Who gives
a damn about their lives and how they live, or die?
Once we wall them off and shut them out in time for the conferences
next year, then they could just keep on killing off each other
in some grisly, gruesome experiment at population control.
Gregory Aboud of Doma has always stressed that each life has
value, and is important, whether good, bad or indifferent,
and we have become so desensitised and numb to the blood-letting
that it no longer moves us to outrage or anger when we see
another one of the nation’s sons, clad in a boxer shorts
and a vest, lying on the ground covered in blood, his glazed
eyes staring lifelessly up to heaven, an unuttered and unanswered
prayer upon his cold lips.
We have gone past and evolved way beyond being shocked or
disturbed by the news reports and the gory headlines.
We have matured as a people beyond blaming our politicians
and leaders for the state of the nation.
We are too civilised for that, and too many of us are tied
to positions where we are dependent on the political directorate
of the day to speak up or to say our piece on any issue, lest
it be misconstrued as criticism and we be marginalised or
demonised for so doing, and it’s all just a happy family
where no one says anything anymore, because no one is to blame.
We just continue like normal and pretend that there isn’t
a problem. We observe kidnappings and just close our doors
tighter, or put more locks on our gates and hope and pray
that it would never come our way.
Violence spirals
We quietly take out our kidnap insurance and install GPS body
trackers under the skin for ourselves and our children, and
just try to keep making our money quietly, to stash away in
Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or Switzerland, pretending that the
volcano is not bubbling, boiling, waiting to explode beneath
our feet.
The recent bombings in Mumbai must surely serve as a wake-up
call to tell us that nowhere in the world, even at the five-star
Taj Mahal hotel, people are not safe anymore, as crime and
violence spirals out of control.
We do not have a history of conflict and terror as do India,
Pakistan and Sri Lanka, but we live in our own little terror
here in T&T, terrorised by the criminal element, where
even police and prisons officers are no longer safe from open
and blatant attacks.
Police officers are crying out to be issued with personal
firearms for protection in their private lives, Prisons officers
are making the same demands, too, and businessmen, professionals
and other members of the public are asking for protection.
From whence cometh our salvation; from where cometh our help
out of this conundrum? What do we do next, what will be our
next conquest after we have broken that record of 501?
