Clarke slams workplace vaccine mandates

Medical apartheid – a racially loaded term used by a small British tour operator that ended its relationship with two hotels here over mandatory vaccinations was picked up Thursday by the leader of the campaign against vaccine mandates over the push to get workers vaccinated.

The coordinator of the steering committee for Barbados Concerned Citizens, Winston Clarke, used the label on the move by some of the island’s employers who he claims have been pressuring their workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

During the latest public demonstration of solidarity with other Caribbean islands where they have been protests against mandatory vaccinations, Clarke told reporters that the pressure now being mounted onto some employees to get vaccinated is equivalent to segregation in other countries.

Anti-vaccine protestors during this morning’s demonstration.

“I’ll be quite frank with you, it’s medical apartheid,” said Clarke. “I compare it to what has happened in South Africa, and Montgomery, Alabama, or any other place that has had racism or segregation or ethnic cleansing in any form, because it has caused a schism here in Barbados between those who are vaccinated, and those who are unvaccinated.

“I saw a conversation on social media, where people are saying those who are unvaccinated and happen to catch COVID, that they should not be treated, they should be left to die. When you get that kind of vehemence, that kind of hate because a person has not accepted the ideology that you have accepted, it shows you how bigoted people have become in Barbados.”

Last week, British tour company Tradewinds cancelled its contract with Bougainvillea Hotel at Maxwell Coast Road and its sister hotel Sugar Bay on Hastings Main Road in opposition to their proposed mandatory vaccination policy.

According to the new policy, the two hotels will only be accepting vaccinated guests from December 15 at the start of the Winter 2022 season.

In a statement on the break, the firm said the policy “promotes medical apartheid”.

Last week, South Africa’s Health Minister Joe Phaahla said the government will leave it up to businesses to decide whether or not to make vaccinations mandatory for employees and clients,

“It is not our priority to start thinking about legislation and regulations which say every adult must vaccinate,” said Phaahla last Friday. “We leave it to those who run industries and services.”

Restaurants, bars, grocery stores and other businesses must set their own policies on whether or not to insist that patrons must be vaccinated in South Africa, considered a success story on the African continent in the drive to inoculate its citizens after a massive spike of infections among the largely unvaccinated, which is said to have led to the spread of the coronavirus’ highly contagious Delta variant.

Clarke once again stressed that the actions of the group were not being influenced by any political groups, with their message only being pro-choice and not anti-vaccine. Leading members of the group, including the Rastafarian community, has declared a strong anti-vax stance.

Yet despite his professed opposition to mandatory vaccinations, the activist insisted that Barbadians must seek to keep their bodies healthy in the form of exercise and the intake of health supplements against the deadly respiratory illness that has claimed 51 lives so far and sickened thousands.

He declared: “We are not politically affiliated, I have no political affiliations whatsoever. I speak to people from all of the parties; I’ve had meetings with the Prime Minister [and] I speak to her regularly, I speak to the Opposition regularly [and] I speak to other political parties regularly. I want to say that we are here relative to people … we are here when human rights are being violated or infringed, that is what we stand up for.”

Clarke declared without supporting evidence his belief that the current spike in coronavirus infections are somehow been ‘inflated’ in some form.

When asked what was the group’s next move Clarke said that a larger demonstration is being planned for the end of the month at the Garrison Savannah. (SB)