Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

“Where is T&T’s hu­man­i­ty?”

That was the ques­tion from hu­man rights ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ments about re­cov­er­ing the car­cass­es of Venezue­lans killed in last week’s US mis­sile strike on a ves­sel al­leged­ly car­ry­ing drugs.

The Prime Min­is­ter said this would on­ly be done if any “car­cass” wash­es up on T&T’s shores. But she blanked Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro’s con­cerns that this coun­try should re­trieve the re­mains of the 11 peo­ple who were on the ves­sel from Venezuela. Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed that she prefers see­ing drug/gun traf­fick­ers “blown to pieces,” as op­posed to see­ing na­tion­als killed be­cause of drug-fu­elled gang vi­o­lence.

But yes­ter­day, Venezue­lan and hu­man rights ac­tivist, Figueroa-Leon, asked, “Where is our hu­man­i­ty? ‘Car­cass’ is a word that means a dead an­i­mal!

“When the Prime Min­is­ter sup­port­ed blow­ing up drug traf­fick­ers vi­o­lent­ly, I un­der­stand where she’s com­ing from - once you quell the drug traf­fick­ing, T&T will have less crime, gang ac­tiv­i­ty, gun traf­fick­ing, and mur­ders. But are we los­ing our hu­man­i­ty? We al­ways com­plained in the past of the way the for­mer prime min­is­ter would speak on cer­tain things, which was ap­palling. Didn’t we learn any­thing from that?”

The ac­tivist added, “Have we lost our hu­man­i­ty? How do we in­tend to quell vi­o­lence in schools and the en­vi­ron­ment if we’ve lost our hu­man­i­ty? So­lu­tions in­volve recog­ni­tion of hu­man­i­ty, em­pa­thy, kind­ness, and car­ing, re­gard­less of who you may be. We need to be more hu­mane.”

She not­ed there was as yet no ver­i­fi­ca­tion of what ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred with the ves­sel.

“We have no of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of who the peo­ple in that boat were, if they were hitch­ing a ride some­where. Every­thing so far has been hearsay. Some due process was in or­der.”

The US au­thor­i­ties have in­sist­ed that the ves­sel was com­man­deered by mem­bers of the Tren de Aragua who were trans­port­ing a drug ship­ment be­fore it was hit by the US strike.

She al­so sug­gest­ed that T&T be “a lit­tle more neu­tral” re­gard­ing the is­sue the US has with Venezuela.

“While I’m hap­py the US is here, I’m not hap­py they’re us­ing force to solve a sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, we in T&T have demon­strat­ed for well more than 10 years that we’re in­ca­pable of man­ning our bor­ders. I could nev­er un­der­stand why so many mi­grants were able to slip in­to T&T so eas­i­ly in such high num­bers. Don’t we have po­lice or se­cu­ri­ty to halt this?”

Mean­while, Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­lez has al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to de­port 200 mi­grants from T&T, warn­ing that the move could put asy­lum seek­ers at se­ri­ous risk. She, too, called for a more hu­mane ap­proach.

Gon­za­lez said many of the in­di­vid­u­als fac­ing de­por­ta­tion are in the coun­try legal­ly seek­ing asy­lum due to the on­go­ing cri­sis in Venezuela.

“If they went through a process, they al­ready know why they are be­ing de­port­ed. Yes, we’re talk­ing about il­le­gal mi­grants, but the ma­jor­i­ty are seek­ing asy­lum be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela,” she said.

She added that some al­so have oth­er le­gal mat­ters be­fore the courts.

She ex­plained that asy­lum seek­ers are not im­me­di­ate­ly recog­nised with Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) cards, as the Unit­ed Na­tions has a process to as­sess po­lit­i­cal asy­lum claims.

“They reg­is­ter with the UN­HCR to see if they could be sent to an­oth­er coun­try, but the process is very slow. Right now, all they can do is try to con­tact the UN on­line, be­cause the of­fice is cur­rent­ly closed,” Gon­za­lez said.

Gon­za­lez urged Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er the hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­pects of de­por­ta­tions.

“Their UN­HCR cards aren’t recog­nised here, so some end up in jail. We must re­mem­ber the con­text of why they fled Venezuela and the dan­gers they face if sent back,” she said.