People have fought for their rights. Often they have been imprisoned for them. Many have actually died as a consequence of the abuse of their rights, and the civilised world, after much warfare, slaughter and destruction, has adopted through the United Nations a universal code of basic human rights which most countries aspire to or adhere to, in varying degrees.

The first chapter of our Constitution has a section declaring our basic rights. As we have observed earlier, the state through its agents has from time to time violated the rights of citizens, sometimes in its treatment of persons who have been apprehended for some reason or convicted for some offence, but also through outright discrimination as we saw in the Maha Sabha case.

These abuses can be and have been extremely costly when successfully contested in our courts and the question inevitably arises about the scale of the abuse that never finds its way to the courts. The problem is in part obviously related to the lack of knowledge and understanding of these rights on the part of both abuser and abused and we sense that as time passes what may have easily been recognised as abuse becomes the accepted norm, in much the same way that the PH taxis and panel van taxis have become accepted despite their illegality.

Not long ago during the Summit of the Americas, with no more than a newspaper advertisement, large areas of Port of Spain were placed under restrictions that were only constitutionally allowable under a properly proclaimed state of emergency, while traffic restrictions were imposed outside of the authority of the Commissioner of Police.

By now most people will have become familiar with lockdowns, police raids and passengers of maxi-taxis being patted down in public. We are sure that many citizens, not only the parents of fifth form students who were strip-searched, were appalled by the events at a private secondary school in St Joseph and will demand answers-it being patently clear that the police did not have reasonable grounds to suspect a single one of the students-grounds that seem to have wide acceptance in civilised jurisdictions elsewhere.