A 1990 hostage episode

THE EDITOR: It is with great sadness that I recently saw the news of the passing of former NAR Member of Parliament and former colleague Jennifer Johnson and wish to offer my belated condolences to her bereaved family.

Though I became estranged from the NAR government in 1988, Jennifer and I continued to maintain friendly relations and exchanged common courtesies. She had a pleasant and engaging personality and was committed to her ministerial responsibility for sports, youth and culture.

I also remembered her stoic endurance of her distressing and traumatic experience as one of the two female MP hostages in the Parliament chamber during the ordeal of our captivity at the hands of the Muslimeen in July 1990.

I mention this 1990 experience to let the public know of the humiliation and indignity parliamentarians suffered inside the chamber courtesy of our Muslimeen captors, which are not generally known and which should never be allowed to happen again.

The convenience for the male captives of relieving their bladder was a bucket placed in one of the partially secluded recesses of the chamber which, when filled, was periodically emptied by the Muslimeen in the toilets adjoining the chamber.

This facility, however, was denied to Dr Anselm St George who was then deputy speaker and was presiding over the proceedings at the time of the invasion. For some reason the Muslimeen erroneously thought that he was a high ranking member of the government.

After the Muslimeen broke into the chamber, they took hold of St George and tied both his hands and feet securely. He was thus immobile on the chamber floor for five days during which time he had to relieve himself in his underwear and trousers. He acutely suffered both from physical and mental torture. Our pleas to the Muslimeen to free his hands and feet fell on deaf ears. It was a personal humiliation from which St George never mentally recovered.

The makeshift convenience provided for the male captives was not practical for the two females in the chamber – Jennifer Johnson and Gloria Henry. They were forced to crawl on all fours in order to avoid the sniper bullets through the windows to access the toilets at the western end of the chamber. It was as degrading as it was fraught with risk.

On the Saturday night (July 28), the Muslimeen were convinced after receiving reports from outside that the security forces were planning to violently force their way into the Parliament chamber in an effort to rescue the hostages.

The Muslimeen had no illusions as to their fate in such an eventuality. They decided to separate the Opposition MPs and the two female MPs/ministers from the other government ministers who were made to lie down next to each other in the well of the chamber and who each had a Muslimeen member standing over him with a pointed gun.

It was the highest point of the surreal hostage drama and the accompanying sense of terror and foreboding during the whole period of captivity.

The Opposition members (four of us) and the two female MPs/ministers were taken to the passageway behind the Speaker’s chair. Muslimeen gunmen stood watch around us, though not pointing their guns directly at us.

I was placed on the floor next to Jennifer Johnson and, in an attempt to distract from the palpable sense of imminent danger and in an extraordinary moment of lighthearted indulgence, I turned to Jennifer and said, “Jenny, not in my wildest dreams did I see myself lying so close to you.” She responded, “Me too, Trevor.” It was an exchange which I could never forget.

May her soul rest in peace.

TREVOR SUDAMA

San Fernando