Trinidad and Tobago extends state of emergency amid escalating violence 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 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”.
