Im­mi­gra­tion/hu­man rights at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed and hu­man rights/crim­i­nal at­tor­ney Criston J Williams say they are not sur­prised by con­tents of the lat­est US State De­part­ment’s Hu­man Rights Prac­tices Re­port on T&T.

While Williams blames bad le­gal ad­vice as the root cause for the many short­com­ings raised in the re­port, Mo­hammed says it is time for T&T to adopt in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards to deal with mi­grant and hu­man rights is­sues.

The re­port, which was re­leased on Mon­day, high­lights sig­nif­i­cant hu­man rights is­sues here in T&T, in­clud­ing cred­i­ble re­ports of un­law­ful or ar­bi­trary killings by po­lice, non-re­foule­ment of asy­lum seek­ers, se­ri­ous acts of cor­rup­tion and traf­fick­ing in per­sons.

Speak­ing on the re­port, Williams said, “I would say, Mr At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, you should prob­a­bly very humbly ex­cuse your­self from the room so that we could have a frank con­ver­sa­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter, be­cause the ev­i­dence is that he has been and is be­ing wrong­ly ad­vised, or you prob­a­bly put in his place the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty be­cause na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty so far, they have been very straight­for­ward with the Par­lia­ment.”

Williams urged the Gov­ern­ment to strength­en not just the hu­man rights of Trinida­di­ans, but fo­cus on strength­en­ing the econ­o­my.

“And it ties in, be­cause I’ll put it out there that cur­rent­ly, the cur­rent con­struct of our ter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tion ba­si­cal­ly doesn’t af­ford any se­cu­ri­ty, A, for our na­tion­als, B, for our econ­o­my. So, when those two things co­in­cide, ba­si­cal­ly it is a cause for con­cern and then we have to watch an op­er­a­tional man­date of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. If you have no ter­ror­ism laws at all, that’s why it boils down to mi­gra­tion and re­foule­ment is­sues and that is why you have had po­lice cor­rup­tion and is­sues with the TTPS, be­cause in the ab­sence of any ter­ror­ism laws, you are set­ting up the Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice for fail­ure, you are set­ting up the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Of­fice for fail­ure al­so. So, that ought to be a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment ought to be con­cerned about the re­port, since it ap­peared very much ac­cu­rate.

On state ac­tion, the re­port stat­ed the Gov­ern­ment took steps to iden­ti­fy, in­ves­ti­gate, pros­e­cute and pun­ish of­fi­cials who com­mit­ted hu­man rights abus­es or cor­rup­tion, but im­puni­ty per­sist­ed due to open-end­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the gen­er­al­ly slow pace of crim­i­nal ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings.

Williams added, “Our hu­man rights re­ports are ac­tu­al­ly get­ting worse over the years. So, then the ques­tion must be asked, Mr AG, or who­ev­er is hold­ing the post of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, how have we reached here, it must be that the Prime Min­is­ter, must be con­cerned about A, his lega­cy, B, Trinidad’s lega­cy, and what im­pact this has on sub­si­dies and ba­si­cal­ly the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Mean­while, Mo­hammed, who has rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al Venezue­lan mi­grants in the on­go­ing mi­grant cri­sis, said she was not shocked by the con­tents.

“It is time for the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to smell the cof­fee as to what is hap­pen­ing in re­gard to mi­grants in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the lack of laws be­ing put in place for them and to pro­tect their hu­man rights ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and con­ven­tion our coun­try is signed to,” she said.

“In terms of the cri­sis that we had our doorsteps, I browsed through the re­port and the area that dealt with refugee and asy­lum seek­ers is some­thing I have been com­plain­ing on for a long time, be­cause now that we have a refugee cri­sis on our doorsteps with the ir­reg­u­lar in­flux of Venezue­lan mi­grants since 2016/2017, the need for us to build our ca­pac­i­ty to deal with it, it has be­come even more com­pelling and I deal with many of these mi­grants on a dai­ly ba­sis and I have to be en­gaged in bat­tles with the im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ty and with oth­er au­thor­i­ties be­cause they just lack that hu­man­i­tar­i­an and hu­man rights out­look.”

She said she felt sor­ry for im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers who are forced to op­er­ate with the ar­cha­ic Im­mi­gra­tion Act of 1969 al­though things have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since then.

Mo­hammed said the on­ly pos­i­tive thing the Gov­ern­ment has done was to de­clare an amnesty for Venezue­lan mi­grants here, which led to the reg­is­tra­tion of over 16,000 mi­grants. How­ev­er, she de­scribed this as a plas­ter on a sore.

“This can­not be the be it all and end-all for the Gov­ern­ment. You can­not have a di­a­logue or a con­ver­sa­tion, and I am talk­ing from the back­ground that I have been trained in refugee law, and we missed a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty in my mind to con­tin­ue to de­vel­op the ca­pac­i­ty for this. For ex­am­ple, we know many of these peo­ple who have been reg­is­tered might have been eco­nom­ic mi­grants, the num­bers that the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced was just about 16,000, how­ev­er, when you check the UNCHR, that num­ber is over 20,000 mi­grants,” she said. — With re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton