Experts believe TT governments have been using states of emergency as a crime-fighting tool rather than to deal with real emergencies in the country.
While legal, according to the country’s Constitution, they say TT should be cautious of its use, as there will always be repercussions to proclaiming a state of emergency (SoE).
In May, in two separate court rulings in Jamaica and Belize, judges declared the proclamation of previous SoEs in those countries as unconstitutional.
The judge of the High Court of Justice in Belize, Trinidadian Justice Nadine Nabbie, who previously worked as a senior attorney in the Solicitor General's Department, summed it up by saying, “The use of the public emergency laws must be reserved for more extreme and extraordinary conditions and ought not to be used as a crime-fighting tool unless the criminal activities are of such a nature to cause civil disorder which prevents the government from ensuring the safety of the citizenry.”
Criminologist Darius Figueira said, that unlike TT, the constitutions of Belize and Jamaica allow for a state of emergency to be declared in a defined area within the country. He explained that, in those countries, SoEs were often a knee-jerk reaction to gun violence.
“The politicians have adopted this knee-jerk approach to gun violence, at levels which take place in TT and we don’t call any SoE.”
He said both the Belizean and Jamaican governments tend to declare SoEs at the early signs of violence, imposing curfews and locking down areas while police and army officers detain those they suspect to be perpetrators, usually in impoverished communities.
[caption id="attachment_1156976" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Soldiers deployed during a state of emergency in Jamaica. -[/caption]
“In Jamaica, (Prime Minister Andrew) Holness came up with this idea to combine the SoE with intervention programmes in the communities that look towards solving the social problems of the space under the SoE.
“The research has shown that this has failed miserably and all that happens in the SoE is that the gunmen simply migrate out of the space and, if they feel like it, they start the violence where there is no SoE.”
Figueira said these countries experienced economic dislocation, constant reports of police malfeasance, aggravated breaches of the rights of citizens, and extrajudicial killings.
He said politicians use SoEs to “pick low-hanging fruit” rather than going after the leaders of criminal organisations or addressing major issues such as the drug or gun trade, or especially in the case of Jamaica, political violence.
“The legal concept for it in North Atlantic law is a state of exception. Using a state of exception as a crime-fighting tool is outside the Constitution. Now the government will have to appeal that all the way to, in the case of Belize it’s the Caribbean Court of Justice and in the case of Jamaica, the Privy Council.”
In contrast, he said, because the TT Constitution only allowed for a national SoE, any declaration would disrupt the enti
