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Trini national Joanne Pantin. - “Someone must be held accountable.”
Those were the words of Joanne Pantin, one of two women who sued the State after being stranded abroad when Trinidad and Tobago closed its borders during the covid19 pandemic in March 2020. Five years later, she has finally received vindication through a ruling of the Court of Appeal. But for Pantin, no judgment or monetary award can erase the suffering she endured.
“I cannot honestly tell you… If that’s the highlight of something for all you had to endure, would compensation wipe that away? That cannot fix what was broken,” she said in an emotional interview on September 30, a day after the ruling.
Pantin, along with fellow claimant Raehana Lorick, challenged the government’s refusal to disclose the criteria used to grant exemptions for nationals stranded overseas. On September 29, Justices of Appeal Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mohammed, and Ronnie Boodoosingh declared that the State’s failure to do so was unconstitutional.
A historic ruling
Bereaux, in delivering part of the unanimous judgment, underscored that the constitutional right of citizens to return home cannot be compromised by executive discretion shrouded in secrecy.
“A decision whereby an exemption to re-enter TT is refused to a national is most certainly a penalty,” he stated. “It matters not if one will be granted at a later date. The fact is that at the time of the refusal, the national is prevented from exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right to return to his or her home country on account of a failure to satisfy some condition.
“It is, therefore, imperative that the individual has notice of what the factors are which support the grant of an exemption… Any failure to inform is a breach of the right.”
Bereaux went further, reminding the nation of the historical struggles that cemented those rights. “The constitutional rights conferred by sections 4 and 5, and in particular the right to liberty, are hard-won rights. The trials inflicted upon our ancestors by slavery and the slave trade, with the mass deprivation of liberty and lives, are matters of record. So too, the trials of indentureship. We must never surrender or compromise our hard-won rights and freedom for which our ancestors paid so dearly.”
He cautioned that even in emergencies, government must remain accountable. “Such compromise usually begins with the most innocuous of executive actions. As judges, we are sworn to uphold the Constitution and the law. No matter how compelling the emergency, the Executive must always be held accountable for infringements of the rights and freedoms of our citizens. As a people, we must demand nothing less.”
Left alone in a pandemic
For Pantin, those principles became painfully personal.
She had travelled to Miami in March 2020 to assist her daughter, whose husband faced a serious health condition. After the French government repatriated its citizens, her daughter and family returned to France. Pantin was left alone in the US, just as Trinidad and Tobago sealed its borders.
“I was in a strange country, my children were not there anymore… few people knew I was there,” she recalled. “I went to help my girl. I was not there for vacation. She needed me.”
By June, she applied for an exemption but heard nothing for months. She said the Ministry of National Security ignored her e-mails. The TT consulate in the US told her they had “no instructions from Trinidad.”
“I didn’t know what to do, who to call, who to message. It was the half of a straw that broke the camel’s back. Because there was no sleep, there were no answers,” she said.
Pantin and other stranded nationals even offered to charter a flight home at their own expense. JetBlue agreed, but the Trinidad government refused. “We said we would pay our own way. My family and friends said they would pay for my quarantine hotel, but they denied us for months.”
The emotional toll was crushing. Pantin described herself in a video recording tendered in evidence as “a broken human being.” She recalled watching nightly news reports of thousands dying in the US. “You’re watching the news and you’re seeing it…bodies in containers. They can’t even get people out to bury them, people’s bodies in containers, and I was being bypassed.”
When Senior Counsel Anand Ramlogan eventually reached out after seeing her video, Pantin said it felt like divine intervention. “I truly believe God answered my prayer and sent Mr Ramlogan, who treated me like a human being,” she said. Ramlogan not only pursued her case but personally sent money to stranded nationals in need.
Even when she was finally allowed back in September 2020, the experience was dehumanising. She recalled being herded on a bus to a quarantine facility. “You get to the place where we were doing the quarantine, they give you a list and tell you if you step out through the door, it’s a $50,000 charge. Only when they knock on the door, step back to get your food, and you can’t come out of the room. Come on, nobody asked what we went through. We suffered.”
Accountability, not just compensation
Asked whether she held bitterness towards those in authority, Pantin was measured but firm.
“I hold a government, the then-government, responsible for the way they handled nationals of TT. How they blatantly ignored us. Didn’t they have an idea how crushing this was to us mentally, physically?”
She added, “Forget the trauma. Let’s be real here at this point. Someone must be held accountable. I don’t want to use the word blame. You are a head of state. You have taken that position to take care of the people of the country. It doesn’t matter who, where they’re from, east, west, north, south, what they look like. Your responsibility was supposed to take care of us at that critical moment.”
For her, accountability is more important than the court’s order of compensation. “That cannot fix what was broken. What was done to us mentally, physically. Even if it’s five years, 10 years, 20 years later — right is right. Someone should be accountable, and this should never happen again.”
For Pantin, the court's ruling brings some relief and a measure of closure. “It took me more than two and a half to three years to get over this. I’m not lying. And I was a strong person emotionally, and that thing, whatever it was, it was crazy. The truth eventually surfaced, and at least someone listened.”
English (US) ·