DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the deaths of two Trinida­di­an fish­er­men re­port­ed­ly killed dur­ing a US op­er­a­tion in Venezue­lan wa­ters on Oc­to­ber 14, amid grow­ing con­cerns over the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of a re­cent US Em­bassy se­cu­ri­ty alert.

The in­ci­dent has sparked un­ease at home, with crit­ics ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of down­play­ing both the killings and the em­bassy ad­vi­so­ry is­sued over the Di­vali week­end.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, ahead of a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Beck­les con­demned what she de­scribed as a lack of trans­paren­cy and urged the ad­min­is­tra­tion to for­mal­ly re­quest in­for­ma­tion from Wash­ing­ton.

“We re­al­ly haven’t had much in­for­ma­tion from them save and ex­cept ‘don’t pan­ic—that’s the on­ly in­for­ma­tion that you have,” she said.

“Two Trinida­di­ans hav­ing been killed, it is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of our gov­ern­ment to ask for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and to be very clear to the Unit­ed States, who I think are the on­ly ones who can pro­vide us with the in­for­ma­tion. These are your cit­i­zens—Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the vic­tims were be­lieved to be Las Cuevas res­i­dents Chad “Char­po” Joseph and Rishi Sama­roo. Beck­les said the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims de­serve an­swers and that any al­le­ga­tions against the men should be ad­dressed through due process in the courts.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so crit­i­cised what she saw as the Prime Min­is­ter’s tac­it en­dorse­ment of vi­o­lent tac­tics in re­sponse to US-led op­er­a­tions, which have re­port­ed­ly killed 32 peo­ple across sev­en strikes. She re­it­er­at­ed her stance that Cari­com must re­main a zone of peace.

Beck­les fur­ther warned that the Gov­ern­ment’s rhetoric may be in­flu­enc­ing do­mes­tic pol­i­cy, ref­er­enc­ing the “stand your ground” pro­pos­al and the Prime Min­is­ter’s past re­mark to “load up the mat­ic”. She ques­tioned whether cit­i­zens ful­ly un­der­stood the im­pli­ca­tions of such lan­guage.

PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so voiced con­cern that Trinidad and To­ba­go risked be­ing drawn in­to es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela, re­it­er­at­ing that the Caribbean must re­main a zone of peace.

Gov­ern­ment de­fends han­dling of alert

While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­knowl­edged pub­lic un­ease in her Di­vali mes­sage, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment had been work­ing “be­hind the scenes” to en­sure cit­i­zens’ safe­ty, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath dis­missed claims of pan­ic or in­ad­e­quate com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“Well, I don’t re­al­ly see that there was anx­i­ety and pan­ic across the coun­try,” Padarath said, de­scrib­ing for­eign ad­vi­sories as “not un­usu­al” and of­ten aris­ing from geopo­lit­i­cal fac­tors rather than di­rect na­tion­al threats.

“There were no jus­ti­fied con­cerns or fears to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty that we could not han­dle. To cre­ate any pan­ic would have been ir­re­spon­si­ble,” he added, not­ing that ques­tions about diplo­mat­ic ex­changes with the US should be di­rect­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter.

On con­cerns about al­leged ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings by the Unit­ed States, Padarath said le­gal re­dress is avail­able through in­ter­na­tion­al courts and that “the law should run its course”. He stressed that T&T re­mains fo­cused on com­bat­ing nar­cotics, guns, and hu­man traf­fick­ing and is “ful­ly with­in our rights to sup­port any in­ter­na­tion­al ef­fort aligned with those ob­jec­tives”.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie de­clined to com­ment on the em­bassy alert when ap­proached at Par­lia­ment but dis­missed so­cial me­dia claims that he had been re­lo­cat­ed to a safe house. “Ab­solute­ly not,” he said.

Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein al­so crit­i­cised what he called “mis­chie­vous” on­line ru­mours that fu­elled pub­lic pan­ic, in­clud­ing claims that the Prime Min­is­ter had been tak­en to a safe lo­ca­tion.

“There was one mis­chie­vous so­cial me­dia blog­ger who may have caused all this stir and pan­ic, in­di­cat­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter was in a safe house. The Prime Min­is­ter was safe­ly in her home. In fact, I think she had din­ner with mem­bers of the US Em­bassy on Fri­day evening. So, it was just mis­chief be­ing cre­at­ed,” Ho­sein said.