Moontown

President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, greets Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister and Member of Parliament for North East St Ann, host constituency of the Emancipation Jubilee, Shahine Robinson, on his arrival at Seville Heritage Park on Friday(July 31) for the event which is part of the annual Emancipation celebrations. Looking on is Prime Minister Bruce Golding(left) and Ernest Smith, Member of Parliament for neighbouring South West St Ann.(photo JIS)

The event, organised by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT), sought to bring greater awareness and acceptance, both locally and globally, to the historical struggles of Jamaicans.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding and his specially invited guest, president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, were among the large crowd at the function.

Golding, in his remarks, urged Jamaicans not to carry their past like a log on their shoulders which burdens them, but to stand up as proud people, facing the future and all the challenges that it offers.

“We gather in a spirit of renewal, because slaves we were, but free men we are today. It is a time like now that we must recall the strength, the courage and the fortitude that our forefathers demonstrated to withstand those many years of bondage and oppression, and we must call on that strength, because we need that strength to take us through the challenges that we will have to overcome,” Mr. Golding said.

Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture, Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange, said that she was proud to be associated with the event.

“I urge all Jamaicans to celebrate with us, as we continue to recognise the struggles of our ancestors, as we forge together forward as an emancipated independent Jamaica,” Minister Grange said.

It was evident that the event was greatly appreciated by the thousands who flocked the grounds of

Performers re-enact the days of slavery at the Emanicipation Jubilee at the Seville Heritage Park in St. Ann, held under the theme ‘Echoes Of The Past.’ (JIS photo)

Seville Heritage Park.

Patricia Smith, from Falmouth in Trelawny, told JIS News that Emancipation Jubilee was an event that she has looked forward to attending every year, since its inception in 1997.

“I have learnt a lot over the years that I have been coming here and, since it started in 1997, I have never missed a year. It is something that I look forward to every year. The history, the information that you get, is just overwhelming,” she said.

She said that the event gives her a chance to reconnect with her past, and to think about where Jamaicans are coming from and where they are now, as a people.

“And I feel proud,” Smith added.

George Williams, from Seville Heights in St Ann, said that Emancipation Jubilee was a wonderful experience, especially for young Jamaicans.

“Over the years I have seen the attendance grow, and I think it has reached tremendous proportions now. I think that it is something that we need to encourage and advertise, as much as possible, to get others to be aware of what their cultural existence has been over the years,” Williams told JIS News.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) – Thousands of demonstrators gathered around the offices of 34 broadcasters that were taken off the air in Venezuela after President Hugo Chavez argued they abused free speech.

Protestors railed against what they described as censorship, denouncing Chavez’s leftist government as a “dictatorship” in chants.

People demonstrate against the decision of the Venezuelan government to close the private radio network CNB, in front of the station’s headquarters in Caracas. AFP PHOTO

Earlier crowds gathered in front of the national telecommunications regulator Conatel, which announced the closures.

Conatel’s head, Diosdado Cabello, said Friday that 32 radio stations and two television stations would be shut down in the latest bid to tighten reins on the media as Chavez advances his leftist-populist program.

“It is not that we have shut some radio stations, we are implementing the law. We have put them back in the hands of the people and not the bourgeoisie,” Chavez said in a televised address on Saturday.

Cabello said the closures were due to the stations’ failures to meet legal operating requirements. The government has warned another 200 stations may face the same fate.

As some stations fell silent, there were hundreds of supporters in Caracas and other cities voicing opposition to the move.

Carlos Correa, director of the free speech NGO Espacio Publico, argued that the government is trying to “break national-level means of offering critical or independent content.”

“We are witnessing the largest ever clampdown on free speech Venezuela has ever seen, unprecedented in its democratic era,” Correa said.

He also expressed outrage that the government’s new draft legislation on “media crimes” could send journalists to prison, and contains other proposed new legal limits on journalistic expression.

One of the leading radio networks silenced Saturday was CNB — with five affiliates in Caracas, Valencia, Maracaibo, San Cristobal and Coro. Its news and feature programming was often critical of Chavez’s government.

CNB owner Edgard Belfort said the move was “an opportunity to show us all that we are all stuck in this big problem. It is not just a problem for journalists, but a problem for all Venezuelans.”

But Cabello insisted that the move was not censorship. He said there were procedural legal problems in all the cases of shutdowns, such as lapsed licenses and improper license transfers.

Radio is an important medium in Venezuela and News and Communications Minister Blanca Eekhout has charged there is an “international media campaign against the Venezuelan revolution,” which she said made it necessary to step up media regulation.

“If media crimes cannot be prosecuted we will all be completely vulnerable,” she said.

Journalist Vladimir Villegas, a former director at VTV state television, was troubled by the shutdowns.

“I think that you can carry out social transformation respecting diversity without having to silence your critics,” he argued.

In 2007, Venezuela’s government did not renew the license of private national television network RCTV, a tough anti-government critic. The government has threatened another network, Globovision, with a shutdown.

Bowling: Tonge 4-0-25-1; Sammy 4-0-33-2 (nb1); Miller 4-0-22-2 (w2); Roach 4-0-15-0 (w2); Bernard 4-0-17-0 (w1)

WEST INDIES (target: 119 runs off 20 overs)

D. Richards bShakib Al Hasan

Fall of wickets: 1-0 (Richards, 0.1 overs); 2-46 (Fletcher, 5.6); 3-67 (Smith, 8.4); 4-107 (Reifer, 15.2); 5-114 (Sammy, 15.6)

Bowling:Shakib Al Hasan 4-0-13-1 (w2); Naeem Islam 2-0-21-0 (nb1); Mahmudullah 1-0-15-0; Nazmul Hossain 2-0-15-1; Mehrab Hossain Jr 2.5-0-20-0 (w1); Rubel Hossain 3-0-13-1; Mohammad Ashraful 2-0-18-2

Result: West Indies won by five wickets

Series: West Indies won only Twenty20 International

Toss: Bangladesh

Umpires: C. Duncan, N. Malcolm, TV Replays: C. Mack, Reserve: G. Greaves

Match referee: R. Mahanama

Man-of-the-Match: Darren Sammy (West Indies)

Trinidad Express

The president of the Supermarkets Association, Balliram Maharaj, is calling for milk distributors to drop the prices at which they are selling their products to citizens.

In a release the supermarket owner said he was joining “Minister Peter Taylor in the call for milk distributors to drop the price of milk.”

Maharaj reiterated the fact that cheese prices have been reduced by almost 50 per cent in recent weeks, and said that this reduction reflected an obvious decrease in the price of milk, which is the base product of cheese.

Maharaj said that apart from cheese, the Association also saw a reduction in the price of meats, peas and beans, rice, sugar, flour and oil.

He also commended the Minister for sharing the government’s vision in relation to enabling competitive local business.

Maharaj said the various initiatives the Government would have to carry out under this vision would include the dismantling of any monopoly which single distributors controlled, as a monopoly hold, especially on basic foods could lead to consumer exploitation.

Trinidad Express

Police raided a hotel at the weekend and arrested several women who had come into Trinidad illegally to work.

The Immigration Department detained 18 women, who had travelled from Colombia, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to find employment.

They will be deported after their cases are determined.

The women were held at the Santa Maria Hotel in Chase Village, Central Trinidad, on Saturday night.

They had sneaked into Trinidad and were expecting a free flight home. But they were instead placed in cells at the Immigration Department in San Fernando.

Sergeants Gary Edwards and Mervyn Edwards, along with officers from the Port of Spain Task Force and San Fernando Immigration Department, were involved in the raid which began around 10 p.m. on Saturday and ended at 2 a.m. the following day.

The women will be charged with entering Trinidad at a place that was not a port of entry, eluding examination by immigration and breaching deportation orders.

Trinidad Express

Aretha Welch awelch@trinidadexpress.com

BWIA’s minority shareholders have concluded that they will be taking the State to court to get a better price for their shares in now defunct BWIA International Airways Ltd, as they find the 20 cents offer the Government is proposing “disrespectful.”

But first the group’s representatives are going to write to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking them to rethink their decision not to get involved in the matter because BWIA is now a defunct, delisted company.

This from minority shareholder advocate, Peter Permell.

Permell said yesterday, while talking to the Express, “Most of those shareholders purchased the stocks at $7.80. Then you had the Government selling them at a discounted price of 20 cents before the company was delisted, but this was never the real value of the shares, it was a discount.”

He said the last price at which the shares were traded before the delisting was 97 cents, and that showed that the shares were not worthless though BWIA was bankrupt.

Permell said that at least 1800 former employees have shares in the company that were purchased with their pension funds and as such this offer was “a slap in the face” to employees who dedicated their lives to the company.

The minority shareholders group held a meeting yesterday at the Cascadia Hotel, St Ann’s.

Permel said the decision to take the struggle for a more equitable share price as far as the courts was unanimous among the persons who attended, and thus far less than 500 of the over 4,000 shareholders who make up the minority group have signed on to accept the Government’s ex-gratia offer of 20 cents per share.

Minister in the Ministry of Finance Mariano Browne said on Friday that the Government was not budging from its offer, however, even in the face of possible legal action.

The Minister also said that there was no plan to offer BWIA’s shareholders a share of Caribbean Airlines, as there is no issue of succession because BWIA was bankrupt in the end.

Aretha Welch and Elizabeth Allard

CRIME SCENE: The house in Bacolet Crescent, Tobago, where the visiting British couple were attacked on Saturday afternoon. -Photo: ELIZABETH ALLARD

The brutal attack on British retirees Murium and Peter Greene is yet another nail in the coffin for tourism in Tobago, said president of the Trinidad Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Association, Kevin Kenny.

Speaking to the Express last night, Kenny condemned the attacks on 59-year-old Miriam and her 65-year-old husband. He said, “It is absolutely and totally intolerable.”

Shortly after 2 p.m. on Saturday the couple, who are said to be from Reading, Berkshire, in the South East of England, were ambushed by two men armed with weapons at their Bacolet Crescent home. Both were severely chopped about the body and face.

The couple, who are reportedly regular visitors, had come into the country on July 29 and were at their holiday home in Bacolet when the attackers struck.

While up to press time last night the incident had not made any mainstream on-line international news, local stakeholders within the tourism industry are already anticipating that the attack will further damage this country’s reputation within the international community.

This attack comes on the heels of Government’s announcements of its decision to spend $20.7 million on an “incentive plan” to upgrade the hotel and guestroom stock of Trinidad and Tobago and a proposal to inject a further $26 million by the Tobago House of Assembly. See Page 22.

Tourism Minister Joseph Ross made the announcement on July 23. The money is due to be invested as part of Government’s effort to improve the tourism product of Trinidad and Tobago.

But Kenny believes an upgrade in room stock, while necessary, will not be nearly enough to counteract the negative publicity which the latest attack and several other acts of violence against both tourists and locals have had on this country’s image.

On-line bloggers had earlier this year deemed this country as “the murder capital of the Caribbean.”

The unwelcome title came after a Swedish couple were chopped to death in October last year in Bon Accord and two British women were raped in front of their husbands by a lone assailant at Black Rock.

Kenny and several other persons within the sector are now saying that Saturday’s attack will do nothing to help the fragile tourism sector which is already taking a hit because people’s disposable incomes decreased significantly due to the current financial crisis.

He said, “Tourists go to the nicest, safest places … and if tourists keep getting attacked, they won’t come.”

President of the Hotel and Tourism Association in Tobago Carol Ann Birchwood James said any crime against tourists would affect tourist arrivals and with the arrivals to Tobago already down this incident has not made the situation any better.

“Police officials need to find ways and means to keep the island safe,” she said.

Secretary of Tourism Oswald Williams described the incident as “unfortunate”.

“It is a national security issue and all efforts are being made to treat with this situation at this point in time,” he said.

But also noted that there had been a marked decrease in crimes against tourists within recent months.

“All hands are on deck to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice,” he assured.

Some of the couple’s neighbours, who wished not to be identified, said they are outraged over the incident and are calling on the police to apprehend the criminals involved.

One woman told the Express yesterday, she was fed up of the crimes against visitors in Tobago, as she and her family live in fear.

“I am upset with the police, someone should have been brought to justice by now. My family and I are living in fear and this is not right what Tobago has come to. Something needs to be done,” she said.

Tourism industry sources say that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will update its advisory about increasing levels of violence and the local police’s inability to apprehend persons involved in these crimes.

The current advisory about Trinidad and Tobago from Britain states, “Although most visits to Tobago are trouble free, crime against tourists in Tobago and the inability of the Tobago authorities to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators remains a concern.”

The advisory had also said, “The authorities on the island are taking positive steps and the situation is beginning to improve.”

The advisory was last updated on June 11. In the last year the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have also issued travel advisories for Trinidad and Tobago warning about the increased levels of crime.