Busi­ness­man Gary Aboud is warn­ing that mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty may even­tu­al­ly choose to leave the coun­try if what he de­scribes as grow­ing racial tar­get­ing and po­lit­i­cal hos­til­i­ty con­tin­ues.

Aboud’s com­ments fol­low re­marks made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dur­ing Wednes­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), where he linked the ‘one per cent’ to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Je­re­mie sig­nalled Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to in­ten­si­fy its crack­down on or­gan­ised crime, stat­ing that au­thor­i­ties would pur­sue white-col­lar crim­i­nals and those who fa­cil­i­tate crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, re­gard­less of their wealth, sta­tus or in­flu­ence. He al­so ref­er­enced the so-called “one per cent,” which is used to re­fer to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty in T&T, ar­gu­ing that in­di­vid­u­als in­volved in crim­i­nal con­duct would face the same treat­ment as gang mem­bers, re­gard­less of their so­cial stand­ing.