Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves has rejected claims that his Unity Labour Party (ULP) operatives contacted international media to generate coverage of the shooting in Green Hill on Friday that left four people dead and four others injured.
He said on Star Radio on Monday that foreign outlets reported the incident because of its scale and St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ international profile.
“… some NDP activists, I’m told, spreading the thing over the weekend that this thing has gotten large coverage throughout the world — it is true it has received large coverage — is because ULP people sending information. I mean, I’ve never heard anything more absurd in all my life,” Gonsalves said
“People are getting information from what the minister said and from the profile of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. For heaven’s sake, we were on the Security Council in 2020 and 2021. We were head of CELAC. The current minister himself is telling the world that.
“The leader, the person who occupies the office of prime minister, now elected to that office, been putting up billboards, been putting up, saying that they meet a failed state. They’re the ones who publicise this thing.”
Gonsalves said that international news organisations pick up reports from local outlets, correspondents and other sources, and make their own decisions about what to publish.
He said that the shooting in Kingstown on July 19, 2023 — when he was prime minister and minister of national security — that left five people dead did not generate as much coverage as the one on Friday.
Gonsalves said that the shooting on Friday was reported on by Al Jazeera, ABC News, Fox News, Yahoo News, the New York Post and the United News of India.
He also said the story appeared in the UK’s Daily Express, Daily Star and Daily Mail, as well as Firstpost.
Gonsalves listed several other outlets, including the Oskaloosa Herald in Iowa and Brief International, which he described as based in London.
He said he had seen a report from the Russian outlet but did not identify it.
Gonsalves said that someone had told him the BBC had covered the incident, adding that in addition to local news outlets, an Associated Press correspondent in the region had written about the story.
The list came as Gonsalves disputed claims by activists for the ruling New Democratic Party (NDP) that ULP supporters had sent the story abroad.
“It’s not in the ULP DNA to bad-mouth St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Gonsalves said.
He argued that international coverage was a predictable result of a major shooting receiving local and regional attention.
Gonsalves also linked the coverage to the country’s visibility as a tourism destination. He cited headlines that described SVG as a luxury tourism destination and referred to the publicity generated by Sandals’ resort advertising.
He said the violence could damage the country’s image abroad.