While the international big press keeps its gaze set on any new developments coming out of London regarding 7/7, the Caribbean blogosphere has done an excellent job covering yesterday's explosion in the Trinidad and Tobago capital city, Port of Spain.
Caribbean Free Radio has a podcast and skype interview discussing the explosion. Christopher Yee Mon, a Trinidad native who posts on Subway Chronicles from New York, has begun a Flickr group to keep track of images related to the blast. Sirius, who was only blocks away from the bomb site at the time of the explosion, reports today that “there were also bomb threats yesterday at Trincity Mall and the Ministry of National Security.” He adds that several more bomb threats have come today and that the FBI is apparently helping in the investigations.
Taran Rampersad, currently on tour throughout the Caribbean, was one of the first bloggers to post about the blast and has the most thorough information including a list of those injured and a hyper-linked summary from around the blogosphere.
Finally, Brian Maloney questions ties to Al-Qaeda while Indira claims it must be a local job.
2 comments
Err. Ok. I’m getting dizzy here while the site changes. :-)
Sirius has simply been the best on coverage from the island of Trinidad. Really great, world class blogging which I am very, very, VERY happy to have found happening.
As far as ‘Al Quaeda’, well, that’s sensationalism. In fact, I just posted that the police do have a suspect who was injured during the bombing. The actual picture of the dustbin which was blown up kind of puts things in perspective. The Jamaat al Muslimeen are probably suspected by everyone. The three groups that get blamed in such instances are: (1) Present Government (PNM), (2) Opposition (UNC), and (3) Jamaat al Muslimeen.
Trinidad and Tobago has lots of news which doesn’t make it onto the internet – bomb scares, etc – which therefore make people feel that they never existed before, especially if they are not from the region. The crime situation – and there is a severe crime situation – may well be the issue. The local extremist factions have been caught with far deadlier toys, and if they had wanted to make a statement they probably would have made a *statement*.
While it’s very convenient to pull Trinidad and Tobago into the Al Quaeda business, twist it into a 9/11 or a 7/7, and get lots of people reading unsubstantiated claims. While Trinidad and Tobago lags in a lot of areas, it is ahead in one thing: Unlike Osama bin Laden – everyone typically knows where Abu Bakr is.
I hope that this highlights to the rest of the world and more importantly to ourselves, how bad crime is becoming in the Caribbean