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  • 9 months ago
In what is to be his last media conference at a CARICOM Heads of Government meeting, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced that a decision was made during the summit in Barbados to declare certain acts of violence in public spaces as acts of terrorism.

Transcript
00:00In what is to be his last media conference at the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting,
00:05Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced that a decision was made during the summit in Barbados
00:10to declare certain acts of violence in public spaces as acts of terrorism.
00:16We agreed that notwithstanding social considerations, we agreed that the changing nature of crime
00:26is such that actions of acts of violence in the public space in certain instances must
00:34now be regarded as acts of terrorism.
00:37We're talking here about indiscriminate shooting in a public place where the perpetrators endanger
00:43all and sundry.
00:48In order to address that, we believe that the legislation needs to be cognizant of what
00:53exactly we're experiencing now as against what the existing legislation anticipated.
01:00Prime Minister Rowley said a former Attorney General from one CARICOM member state shall
01:05spearhead the effort for the required legislation.
01:10And to that end, heads sourced and obtained the services of a former AG of Belize, Godfrey
01:20Smith, who has been tasked to review our legislative templates and to come up with new legislative
01:31proposals for consideration by the heads for changes to be made on the legislative side
01:38to treat what we are experiencing as against what we are surprised by.
01:45Prime Minister Rowley spoke in his capacity as the outgoing head of government with lead
01:49responsibility for security in the quasi-cabinet of CARICOM.
01:54We expect that these acts, using the tools of trade of the criminals at large in our
02:04communities from Bahamas to Suriname, St. Lucia to Trinidad and Tobago, that they be
02:12deemed to be acts of terrorism and allow us to view them not only by the executive
02:20but by our judiciary and allow us to fashion the appropriate legislation to do that.
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