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Trinidad's frightening crime wave

Ram Jagessar

They have a new word in Trinidad these days Indo-nap-ping. As you have guessed, it refers to the new crime of kidnapping Indians for ransom.

Several dozen of this crime have already occurred this year, continuing last year's pattern of one kidnapping every two days. Most of the victims, by some strange coincidence, have been Indians, although the police and the government insist it is not racial crime. By another accident, most of the kidnappers have been identified by their victims as Africans, and most of those, charged with kidnapping have been Africans.

And when they say ransom, these kidnappers are not talking chicken feed money. They are asking, and getting, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions in some cases. In the most recent case last week, the kidnappers have demanded $10 million for a young girl whose parents run a roti shop.

A family who ran a jewellery store in Trinidad barely escaped a kidnapping attempt last week, driving away from a vehicle containing kidnappers pretending to be police. What a supreme irony! Many Indos in Trinidad believe that there are policemen protecting the kidnappers, if not actually helping them. How else could kidnapping be flourishing in Trinidad for almost two years now (since the present government took
power) with the police helpless to do anything serious to stop it?

The jeweller family didn't wait to make useless complaints to the police. They closed down their million dollar business the same day, bought plane tickets and did an immediate Indo-nap-migration. Call it migration by Indians to escape kidnapping. I
hear that many Indians are quietly shipping out their children from sweet Trinidad, I

This kidnapping business has the entire Indian community jumping in their boots. The rich ones are living on the edge as they see wave after wave of kidnappings occur month after month. The police and the government have responded with press releases, vain threats to apply the law severely, and plans to make more serious laws against kidnapping.

Middle class and even poor Indians are getting worried too. Kidnappers are asking for hundred thousand dollar ransoms from Indians whose businesses are small auto garages and retail shops.

I very much fear that kidnapping is here to stay in Trinidad. It's like cocaine trafficking. So many people have made easy money from it that they will never go back to robbing gas stations for $200 or sticking up market vendors for a couple thousand. Why take the risk? Just grab some Indian's child and you can get at least $50,000 with no risk and very little fear of the police.

The kidnappers have stumbled on a weak point among Indians - our love for our family, and especially our children. Most Indians will do anything for their children, pay any money to save them. It is their proud boast that they will make any sacrifice for their children, and those children are the reason they work so hard and save so much. So they will pay the kidnappers.

But there is another side to this story. Indians will see that the wealth they have been
working so hard to build for their children is being taken away by lazy, good for nothing crooks. They will lose their reason for living and working. There is no point in planting crops for somebody else to reap.

Indians will leave a country where they cannot reap the benefits of their labour. Those who cannot leave will produce only enough for themselves and a little saving for an emergency. Why kill yourself to build a big business when you will probably have to liquidate it to pay a kidnapper? Look out for the enterprising Indians to abandon Trinidad in the next few years.

This kind of thing has happened before. In nearby Guyana a few years ago the Burham government took on the kidnapper role and forced Indian rice farmers to sell their rice at low prices only to the government rice board. The farmers responded by cutting their rice crops to subsistence level^and that finished the era of massive rice production and wealth from rice. Later, many of the Guyanese Indian business people fled to various countries all over the world.

Exactly the same thing happened in Tanzania when the government sought to control the wealth of the Indian business people by methods like forced intermarriage with the local Africans. Sometimes the Indian may behave like a donkey, but don't believe he is an ass.

This kidnapping epidemic is the worst threat Indians in Trinidad have had to face in many decades. If it continues it has the capacity to become a mind changing force. It could make Indians turn away from the attitude many still hold today: that they were born in Trinidad and they are going to stay there no matter what.

Indo Caribbean World Page 4, October 08, 2003