00:00The young Muslim gunmen who too thought they were going to die, one who lived or lives in a very
00:09posh area in northwest Trinidad, came and gave us a note, I think it was a note, to give to
00:17his parents because he did not know he was coming to overthrow a government.
00:24He was just put in a minibus in Makarapo, drove to the destination with TTT, and upon arrival, guns placed
00:37in his hands and told, follow me.
00:40That complexity is one of the things that has remained with them, because even in the middle of a violent
00:46attempted coup, the people inside the station were not experiencing one single emotion.
00:51There was fear, there was confusion, and there were moments of unexpected human interaction.
00:57One of the Muslim guys just walk in and say, you and you come, me and somebody else.
01:03He got up, and we went.
01:07Down the corridor, into a room, and he opened the room and closed the door behind us.
01:12He pulled a gun out of his waist, and at that time I'm like, okay, we're dead, he's going to
01:18kill us.
01:18You know, and then what he did, he turned the gun around.
01:21He said, hold this.
01:24You know, and we're like, okay.
01:27He said, I'm going to teach you how to operate this and so on, because, yeah, it's quite funny.
01:33He says, you never to know.
01:35When you get out, you might be walking on the road at night, somebody with a gun attack you,
01:39you take the gun from him and you don't know how to use it.
01:42You know, and he's showing us this gun where there's the safety and so on and so on.
01:46Then came the phone calls, one phone call, a chance to let someone outside know they were still alive.
01:54For Richard, that call was to his mother.
01:57I called my mother first.
01:59And what was your reaction?
02:01Well, I could hardly understand what you were saying.
02:05Dominic made a different choice.
02:07I had to make a decision.
02:09Do I call my wife and put her through that experience, because I knew that she would have been keeping
02:19her strength
02:19and keeping the children controlled and strength.
02:24And if I called her, she would have broken down.
02:28So I called my oldest friend, whom I knew would have spoken to her subsequently.
02:36And we had a brief chat.
02:39Finally, the sixth day came around, and the hostages were free to go.
02:43Well, he said, okay, you all get up and go downstairs, because we were upstairs then.
02:51And, you know, they said they let you all out first, and then, you know, we have to go.
02:59And when we all were downstairs, it was like, you know, friends who, you know, weren't, may not see each
03:11other for a long time after that.
03:13Everybody was hugging everybody.
03:14I'm talking about the Muslims were hugging us, we were hugging them.
03:18It was like, yeah, you know, okay, goodbye, hope everything is okay.
03:23The same people that go hostage.
03:26The Stockholm Syndrome.
03:28But for Richard, the impact did not end when they were released.
03:32He says he was traumatized far long after.
03:35For months, I had nightmares.
03:39Yeah, I had nightmares, I was outside shooting at TDT, you know, and, you know, getting return fire, go on,
03:46on, on, on, you know, I was, you know, I'm into pianos and so on.
03:51I was outside TDT, a man was building a piano right up at TDT, and he turned into a coffin,
03:56you know, all those kind of weird things.
03:58Today, he says he is in a better place, but trauma does not always announce itself.
04:03Sometimes, it is the people closest to us who recognize it first.
04:06Dominic says he never believed he ever really had any trauma after the fact.
04:12His wife, however, saw things differently.
04:15I am told by my wife for a short time upon our return home, I had restless nights.
04:23I don't remember that at all, but she would have told me I had restless nights.
04:27But what both Richard and Dominic remembered most was the heroic actions of their fellow colleague, Jones P. Madera.
04:34The country has not been allowed to recognize the heroic role played by Jones P. Madera, who at the time
04:46was the head of news and current affairs at TDT,
04:49who was the one who communicated between Ababaka and the authorities,
04:57who was the one who, because of the nature in which he was able to negotiate between the insurgents and
05:06the authorities,
05:07saved lives at TDT, perhaps even at the Red House.
05:12And he has never yet been officially recognized or given a national award for his gallantry and bravery.
05:20And perhaps that is the part of the 1990 attempted coup that is often left out of history.
05:26The story does not end when the guns are put down.
05:29It does not end when the hostages are released.
05:32For the people who were inside Parliament and TDT, the event continued long after July 27th.
05:39In memories, in conversations, in the things they chose not to say,
05:44and in the emotions that can still surface even 36 years later.
05:51I don't want to continue.
05:54You don't want to continue?
05:56Okay.
06:00Rochelle Edwards, TB6 News.
Comments