CHARLES KONG SOO

Ac­tivist and Founder/Di­rec­tor of La Ca­sita His­pan­ic Cul­tur­al Cen­tre An­dreina Briceno-Brown says pro­mot­ing xeno­pho­bic at­tacks on Venezue­lans at the na­tion­al lev­el or sanc­tion­ing cit­i­zens for as­sist­ing Venezue­lans to leave them vul­ner­a­ble to se­ri­ous mis­treat­ment, un­jus­ti­fied evic­tions, com­pro­mise their safe­ty, abus­es and vi­o­lence.

She was re­spond­ing to Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s com­ment at Sat­ur­day’s press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s that if Venezue­lan mi­grants were reg­is­ter­ing high num­bers of COVID-19 cas­es, Gov­ern­ment would not hes­i­tate to in­form the pub­lic.

Briceno-Brown said “The spe­cif­ic da­ta on who is in­creas­ing the COVID-19 fig­ures in T&T are in the hands of the CMO and the Min­istry of Health.

Hold­ing the “reg­u­lar and ir­reg­u­lar” Venezue­lans who re­side on the is­land re­spon­si­ble would be ir­re­spon­si­ble and even dif­fi­cult to con­firm, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that the chain of in­fec­tions that the sys­tem had a few months ago had been lost.

“This is a com­mu­ni­ty spread of the virus and has no dis­crim­i­na­tion of who it in­fects. COVID-19 is eas­i­ly con­fused with oth­er in­fluen­za and those asymp­to­matic peo­ple are out there with a mask per­haps spread­ing un­con­trol­lably.

“There are stud­ies that con­firm that chil­dren can trans­mit it for up to three months and adults per­haps one month.”

She said Venezue­lans were forced to flee the so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­sis and crimes against hu­man­i­ty that oc­curred in their coun­try.

Briceno-Brown said there had nev­er been any ill will or in­ten­tion of harm­ing this coun­try, the com­mu­ni­ty or the peo­ple who were reach­ing out to them.

She said in­sist­ing on a con­ta­gious the­o­ry like this would make peo­ple think of the lim­i­ta­tions and scenes of dis­crim­i­na­tion to which Venezue­lans were vic­tims of on a dai­ly ba­sis in some health cen­tres.

Briceno-Brown said com­ing from a fam­i­ly of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als re­mind­ed her every day of the sac­ri­fices and the risks to her fa­ther and broth­er to save the health and lives of their pa­tients re­gard­less of their na­tion­al­i­ty.

She said the sad­ness in­vad­ed her when she was moved to dis­cuss or ask for ad­vice from some lo­cal doc­tors who due to lo­cal health poli­cies as it re­lates to non-na­tion­als put their ethics and even the ho­n­our of this no­ble pro­fes­sion on a fine line to avoid a sanc­tion.

Briceno-Brown said for the so­ci­ety in gen­er­al, it would be more pro­duc­tive to ac­cept in­ter­na­tion­al as­sis­tance that al­lowed the gov­ern­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with this emer­gency since the virus does not dis­crim­i­nate.

She said to al­low ac­cess to the fun­da­men­tal right to health so that it was ac­cept­able and time­ly for vul­ner­a­ble groups.

Briceno-Brown said if they con­tin­ued with the haughty and xeno­pho­bic nar­ra­tive, the re­spons­es in the lo­cal sec­tors to the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty will not change, forc­ing them not to seek con­trolled med­ical care and thus ex­pos­ing the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.