Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to fight against what it says is fur­ther mis­in­for­ma­tion by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States’ (OAS’) gen­er­al sec­re­tari­at con­cern­ing last month’s trag­ic drown­ing of a num­ber of Venezue­lans off Guiria.

The OAS sec­re­tari­at has con­tin­ued to cir­cu­late in­for­ma­tion that the re­mains of the drown­ing vic­tims were found “on the mar­itime bor­der of Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The group of 41 Venezue­lans set off from Venezuela bound for T&T on De­cem­ber 6 but Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties said their boat, which was ca­pa­ble of car­ry­ing on­ly eight peo­ple, cap­sized.

The ship­wreck oc­curred 11 nau­ti­cal miles from Guiria in Venezue­lan wa­ters and the bod­ies washed ashore there. Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties found that the ves­sel was over­loaded and lacked life­jack­ets or nav­i­ga­tion aids. Its own­er was ar­rest­ed for hu­man traf­fick­ing and the own­er of the lo­ca­tion where they left from was al­so ar­rest­ed. Ten oth­ers were al­so sought.

The OAS sec­re­tari­at, which has a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion on it, has had neg­a­tive his­to­ry with T&T con­cern­ing this coun­try’s non-in­ter­ven­tion­ist stance on Venezue­lan mat­ters. Gov­ern­ment has al­so crit­i­cised OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Luis Al­ma­gro’s stance in the OAS’ in­volve­ment on Venezue­lan mat­ters.

Just be­fore the drown­ings, T&T and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries were ab­sent from an OAS vote con­demn­ing Venezuela’s De­cem­ber 6 elec­tion.

When the drown­ings oc­curred For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne slapped down false al­le­ga­tions by OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al en­voy (Venezue­lan Mi­gra­tion and Refugee Cri­sis) David Smolan­sky, in­clud­ing that the ill-fat­ed boat “could have been sent back by T&T.”

But mis­in­for­ma­tion by oth­er Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers in and out of T&T caused protests out­side of T&T’s em­bassies in Cara­cas and Wash­ing­ton (the lat­ter, where the OAS is based.) Those in the Wash­ing­ton protest con­firmed the ac­tion was geared to stop T&T “pro­tect­ing/sup­port­ing” (sic) the Maduro regime.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs re­vealed the OAS’ gen­er­al sec­re­tari­at has con­tin­ued with ‘mis­in­for­ma­tion’.

The min­istry stat­ed, “Gov­ern­ment views with grave con­cern the con­tin­ued cam­paign of mis­in­for­ma­tion gen­er­at­ed by the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) and its de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to tar­nish the good name and rep­u­ta­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The min­istry stat­ed that the lat­est in the OAS’ acts is its press re­lease of De­cem­ber 30, 2020, ti­tled, “New Re­port Warns Num­ber of Venezue­lan Refugees and Mi­grants could Rise to 7 mil­lion in 2021”.

That made ref­er­ence to the trag­ic loss of life of 33 Venezue­lans, but in­ac­cu­rate­ly stat­ed that the re­mains of the de­ceased were found “on the mar­itime bor­der of Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“Fac­tu­al records have de­tailed that the in­ci­dent oc­curred in Venezue­lan wa­ters off the coast of Guiria. To use the trag­ic cir­cum­stance and, even the death of Venezue­lan na­tion­als, in such a man­ner is dis­taste­ful, rep­re­hen­si­ble and goes against the pur­pose of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion and its Gen­er­al Sec­re­tari­at.”

The min­istry stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment has called on the OAS to cease this ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The OAS’s cur­rent course can re­sult in in­cal­cu­la­ble dam­age to the in­tegri­ty of the or­ga­ni­za­tion and the trust re­posed in it by its le­git­i­mate mem­bers.”

Browne told Guardian Me­dia, “We have again writ­ten the OAS sec­re­tari­at this week and on each oc­ca­sion, we point them to the in­ac­cu­rate and false con­tent with­in their re­leas­es.”

Gov­ern­ment isn’t par­tic­i­pat­ing in vot­ing on any OAS mat­ter un­til the OAS re­in­states a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Maduro regime and re­moves the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his po­lit­i­cal chal­lenger Juan Guaidó.

Sev­er­al Caribbean states, like T&T, ab­sent­ed them­selves from the re­cent OAS vote on Venezuela’s elec­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the new CARI­COM chair­man, has said the is­sue of Venezuela will not go away.