T&T ON DARK ROAD TO HAITI’S ANARCHY?

GANGSTERS storm homes and mercilessly murder innocent occupants.

Armed with high-powered weapons, criminals slaughter at will, with women and children among their victims, and loot places of commerce, confident that they would not be held by an outmaneuvered police service.

There is public lynching, brazen attacks on innocent victims, and a spree of kidnappings for ransom.

People are beheaded, girls raped, and rivals poured with gasoline, strung with tyres and set alight.  

The frightening life-and-death crisis has led to stark poverty, starvation, and diseases, including cholera, and a flight of hundreds of thousands of nationals.

The capital city “has reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict,” said a pained United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

A new international report said the country continues “to suffer one of the worst human rights crises in decades and a major humanitarian emergency.”  

This could be Trinidad and Tobago’s dire destiny, but it is the current woeful state of Haiti, a deeply troubled and tormented fellow Caribbean land.

“Inhabitants feel besieged,” a recent UN report stated.

“They could no longer leave their homes for fear of armed violence and terror imposed by the gangs.”

A doctor told an international reporter: “They torture you; they kill you.”

Guterres pleaded last week: “I reiterate the urgent need for the deployment of an international specialised armed force.”

Anarchy has become a common depiction of Haiti, and especially its capital city Port-au-Prince, as the UN and other agencies relate horrific examples of violence and devastation.

The UN Human Rights Commission described the land of 11.5 million as “a living nightmare,” and the World Health Organisation reported on the rampant spread of diseases and deaths of children.

T&T has already been identified as the sixth most violent country, per capita, with daily mass murders, home invasions, cruel assaults, and other acts of cold-blooded cruelty.

The relentless killings are spreading to quiet, rural communities.

The police detection rate remains in single digits, a parade of hapless police chiefs are merely mouthing promises, and the judiciary churns out justice at a snail’s pace.

The national borders are a wide open invitation to drug and gun runners, and international mercenaries.

Investors are steering clear, nationals, especially the middle class, are fleeing, and with them, precious human and financial capital.

The government remains indifferent, with Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley accepting an international university doctorate for “building a better society for all of us.”

Haiti, founded on struggle, is also the victim of oppressive leadership, widespread corruption, and a history of lawlessness.

The assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021 was just the latest act of insurgency in the poorest country in the hemisphere.

The militants in the slave revolt in 1791 could clearly not have anticipated a 2023 report describing the country as undergoing “unimaginable devastation” and as “worsening significantly” and “appallingly poor.”

C.L.R. James’ seminal “The Black Jacobins” of 1938 and David Rudder’s 1988 “Haiti, I’m Sorry” extolled the resolve and purpose of that land.

James’ formidable narrative is of a struggle against tyranny.

Regrettably, Rudder – now at the announced tail-end of his stellar career – has not revisited a country without elected officials and on the brink of total collapse.

As with Haiti, so, too, with Trinidad and Tobago, our country having been launched into nationhood in 1962 with pride and optimism.

Haiti is into unparalleled anarchy, the Miami Herald reported.

With people being butchered on the streets, commentators are comparing it to the genocide of Rwanda.

With its untamed crime scourge, is Trinidad and Tobago along the dark road to Haiti’s anarchy?