Parliament unanimously agrees on three-month extension of security measures after gang warfare kills six last week. Escalating violence in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) has caused the country’s government to extend emergency security measures declared in December, after a week of bloody gang warfare that left at least six dead.
Late on Monday evening, the T&T parliament unanimously agreed on a three-month extension of a state of emergency announced on 30 December after police said they received intelligence about an imminent gang war. The security measure temporarily suspends several constitutional rights, and gives the police and defence force the power to search and seize assets. The prime minister, Keith Rowley, told parliament that the measure was saving lives, adding that it had probably prevented multiple killings with high-powered riffles, possibly in busy public areas.
But the government stopped short of implementing a curfew, with the prime minister saying that the state of emergency should be “as tailored as it is, as unobtrusive as it is to the law-abiding citizen”. The twin-island Caribbean nation has been struggling with rising homicides and gang violence for more than a decade. Last year, T&T, which has a population of about 1.5 million, recorded 624 homicides, making it one of the most violent countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
According to police, gang-related violence in 2024 accounts for more than 40% of the murders, many involving illegal guns. Rowley on Monday criticised a “deliberate policy by the American Department of Commerce to export arms and ammunition”, which he said was putting pressure on countries like T&T.
