CHRIS MUST LIST SHOULD BE ON OUR CHRISTMAS LIST

CHRIS MUST LIST SHOULD BE ON OUR CHRISTMAS LIST

INTREPID digital media journalist Chris Must List deserves the appreciation of all right-thinking nationals – for at least two essential reasons.

One is that the video blogger got into the heart of Trinidad and Tobago’s dark underworld and graphically told the stunning stories of merciless gangsters.

He provided a unique insight into the thick-as-thieves and cruel community that is terrorising the nation while the well-equipped protective services remain soundly asleep on the job.

The second reason is that Chris Must List’s arrest and prosecution remind us that the authorities are prepared to selectively inflict the repressive Sedition Act against anyone who is seen as peddling inflammatory material.

It is a dreadful wake-up call that this archaic and tyrannical legislation could be weaponised against a professional who exposes the failures and wrongdoing of the powerful.

Both are disturbing scenarios.

The crime disaster is wrecking T&T, turning it unrecognisable from what existed a mere decade ago, with bloody victims, a flight of people and talent and an overall trail of human and property destruction.

There can be no relative peace until the treacherous and dangerously armed gangsters are brought to heel.

The authorities appear to be light years from achieving that goal.

They seemed blindsided by Chris Must List’s disclosures, suggesting that they are unaware of the murderers’ paths in these two tiny islands.

That is a shocking embarrassment to the protective services, which costs taxpayers billions of precious dollars.

This is in addition to the lack of purposeful effort in closing the wide-open coastline, blocking the illicit importation of American-made weapons and curbing the flow of illegal guns.

Chris Must List exposed law enforcement’s woeful inefficiency, although that was surely not his core professional objective.

In the manner of any good storyteller, he simply wanted to relate the inner workings of a select group, in this case the ruthless criminal world.

The traditional media have not bothered to examine the life and times of the killing squads.

Chris Must List is now paying with his liberty, indicted on a law that no longer exists in most democratic countries.

The fact that civil society has not risen against the Sedition Act remaining on our law books is as worrying as the discriminatory use of the authoritarian law.

Sat Maharaj and Watson Duke, two anti-establishment figures, were previous victims.

But purveyors of ethnic hate on public radio and social media escape the attention of the morality police.

The recent turn of events ought to be a source of disquiet as T&T races toward a general election that could alter the country’s landscape.

Chris Must List is a martyr of sorts.

He simply wanted to get into the belly of the beast but emerged with gripping revelations of the gangland and on criminal charges fashioned by an oppressive law.

That he remains committed to his craft gives a penetrative peek into a professional with resolve and pluck.

He deserves our gratitude and admiration.

Let’s add him to our Christmas list.