RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

The UN­HCR has as­sured that it is work­ing close­ly with the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing the de­ten­tion and al­leged ill-treat­ment of Venezue­lan mi­grants de­tained at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port since Ju­ly 9—the past 25 days.

The rev­e­la­tion comes as at­tor­neys for 70 de­tainees will be be­fore the court on Fri­day call­ing for their re­lease.

Close to 200 mi­grants were de­tained at a bar in St James and tak­en to the he­li­port.

While some were served with de­por­ta­tion or­ders, oth­ers were re­leased with scores re­main­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty, which they claimed is a health and hu­man rights haz­ard.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the UN­HCR yes­ter­day for its views on what has been hap­pen­ing with the de­tainees.

The on­ly re­sponse giv­en was that “In Trinidad and To­ba­go, UN­HCR, works in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Gov­ern­ment, UN Agen­cies, in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal NGOs to pro­tect and as­sist refugees and oth­ers in need of in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion.”

It added that its le­gal part­ner Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty (LWC) can be con­tact­ed on le­gal ser­vices, “pro­vid­ed through a net­work of pro bono lawyers of­fer­ing le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion to refugees and asy­lum-seek­ers”.

Ef­forts to con­tact the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, an emer­gency hear­ing will take place in the High Court be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim to­day in­volv­ing 70 Venezue­lan mi­grants who are be­ing de­tained at the he­li­port.

The de­tainees are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys of Quan­tum Le­gal in­clud­ing Blaine So­bri­an, Criston J Williams and Shiv­anand Mo­han.

The ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view was filed on Wednes­day and be­cause of its ur­gency, the hear­ing was sched­uled for to­day.

The prin­ci­pal ground up­on which re­lief is sought ac­cord­ing to the ap­pli­ca­tion is that the de­tainees have not been re­leased pend­ing the out­come of the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their claims for Refugee/Asy­lum Seek­er sta­tus un­der the UN­HCR de­spite that or­ders of de­por­ta­tion to Venezuela were is­sued on Ju­ly 24.

The le­gal doc­u­ments stat­ed that the Ap­pli­cants/In­tend­ed Claimants are cit­i­zens of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela who were ar­rest­ed on Ju­ly 9 and sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to “The He­li­port” Ch­aguara­mas, where they re­main de­tained to date.

The Re­spon­dent/In­tend­ed De­fen­dant is the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

A pre-ac­tion let­ter is­sued by Quan­tum Le­gal on Ju­ly 31 called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds not to de­port the mi­grants un­til their refugee sta­tus with the UN­HCR is de­ter­mined.

On Tues­day, the de­tainees com­menced a hunger strike over what they claimed to be the wors­en­ing con­di­tions at the he­li­port in­clud­ing leak­ing and un­san­i­tary toi­lets, spoilt food and sick­ness­es con­tract­ed be­cause of the live-in con­di­tions.

They al­so claimed that their at­tor­neys were be­ing pre­vent­ed from meet­ing with them.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day re­gard­ing those al­le­ga­tions, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion stat­ed the mat­ter is en­gag­ing its at­ten­tion. “Please be ad­vised that the mat­ter has been placed be­fore the Coun­cil of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion,” it said.