Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal fish­er­men agree that a ves­sel with­out a flag in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters could be mis­tak­en for a pi­rate ship, but they say the ab­sence of a flag alone does not jus­ti­fy it be­ing de­stroyed.

On Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar weighed in on the ves­sel at the cen­tre of the Unit­ed States’ “dou­ble tap” con­tro­ver­sy, say­ing it may not have been fly­ing a flag and was there­fore treat­ed as a sus­pect­ed pi­rate ves­sel.

Fish­er­folk who spoke with Guardian Me­dia at King’s Wharf and Ota­heite Bay yes­ter­day ex­plained that lo­cal boats are iden­ti­fied through num­bers and let­ters. Clement Charles, pres­i­dent of the Ota­heite Red Brick Trace Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion, said that if a ves­sel has no flag, it should be in­ter­cept­ed and in­ves­ti­gat­ed be­fore any dras­tic mea­sures are tak­en.

“I be­lieve their craft is sup­posed to be faster than the boats that pass through in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters. So if they think they are pi­rates, hold them and get some ev­i­dence to con­firm,” Charles said.

Clin­ton Lochan, vice pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co­op­er­a­tive, how­ev­er, sup­ports the ex­tra-ju­di­cial strikes the Unit­ed States has been car­ry­ing out against al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers. He al­leged that small, fast ves­sels with “three big en­gines” were in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Those is drug trade ves­sels. At the end of the day, every­body will say they wrong, they not sup­pose to be do­ing that, but when you check right now, the drug traf­fick­ing in Trinidad right now it ease up and the traf­fick­ing of hu­mans it ease up com­pared to how it was be­fore. They not see­ing that part, they on­ly see­ing where they killing.”

An­oth­er fish­er­man, Steve Mo­hammed, who owns three ves­sels, said it might be safer for boats ven­tur­ing out­side of this coun­try’s wa­ters to have a T&T flag.

Giv­en the sit­u­a­tion, he sug­gest­ed that the au­thor­i­ties pro­vide lo­cal fish­er­men with a stan­dard flag for their ves­sels. “Some­thing to say that it is a Trinidad and To­ba­go flag and not some­thing that is eas­i­ly du­pli­cat­ed,” he said.

Mo­hammed al­so claimed that the ab­sence of the flag was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to launch a strike at a ves­sel and ques­tioned why there was no ev­i­dence of drugs, which were al­leged­ly be­ing trans­port­ed in the boats blown up, float­ing in the sea.

An­oth­er fish­er­man, Rawl­ins Cayenne, said many Venezue­lan ves­sels cross­ing in­to lo­cal wa­ters legal­ly do not have flags.

“We did not re­al­ly think about hav­ing a flag on the boats, but if that is what have to hap­pen, it is best it hap­pens be­cause it will be sav­ing us and those who com­ing in too, so that we can iden­ti­fy them and they can iden­ti­fy us.”