GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Hold the line, Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This lit­tle coun­try which fa­cil­i­tat­ed the reg­is­tra­tion of 16,543 Venezue­lans, even as cit­i­zens are strug­gling to cope, is now be­ing as­sault­ed by el­e­ments us­ing name­less peo­ple with in­no­cent chil­dren, to force T&T to ac­cept their un­der­stand­ing of “refugee sta­tus and in­ter­na­tion­al treaty.”

Voic­ing that view yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley held the line against il­le­gal mi­gra­tion as con­tro­ver­sy con­tin­ued on the re­cent de­por­ta­tion and re­turn of a group of Venezue­lans who first en­tered T&T il­le­gal­ly on No­vem­ber 17.

Row­ley al­so im­me­di­ate­ly replied to Unit­ed Na­tions Hu­man Rights (UNHR) state­ments on the in­ci­dent.

And For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne has warned that hu­man traf­fick­ing from Venezuela will strain T&T’s abil­i­ty to as­sist Venezue­lans who are here legal­ly.

But Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal and UNC lead­er­ship chal­lenger Vas­ant Bharath have con­demned Gov­ern­ment on the de­por­ta­tion.

The Venezue­lan group that en­tered T&T il­le­gal­ly was sent back to Venezuela un­der Coast Guard es­cort. The court lat­er struck down a claim by at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed, who tried to pre­vent the de­por­ta­tions. But the group re­turned on Tues­day and an­oth­er le­gal bat­tle has be­gun.

In an­oth­er mat­ter, how­ev­er, the court ruled that cer­tain Venezue­lan chil­dren who were de­tained at the Ch­aguara­mas He­li­port by the Coast Guard be freed in­to the cus­tody or rel­a­tives here. Oth­ers who didn’t have rel­a­tives here re­main in de­ten­tion at the fa­cil­i­ty.

The en­tire is­sue has earned Gov­ern­ment crit­i­cism, in­clud­ing from Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do and the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees, which called on Gov­ern­ment to safe­guard the hu­man rights of refugee and mi­grant chil­dren.

On the over­all mat­ter, how­ev­er, Row­ley, via a state­ment yes­ter­day, said, “Why should we be sur­prised? The Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) un­der its mis­guid­ed Pres­i­dent Al­ma­gro has been al­most sin­gle­hand­ed­ly re­spon­si­ble for trig­ger­ing and fu­elling the cur­rent Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion and these pub­lic of­fi­cials have vir­tu­al­ly de­clared war on T&T for hav­ing the temer­i­ty to have not joined El­liot Abrams and Pres­i­dent Trump in forc­ing vi­o­lent regime change in Venezuela.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is cur­rent­ly un­der the lat­est as­sault, us­ing name­less, face­less peo­ple armed with in­no­cent chil­dren, to try and force us to ac­cept their un­der­stand­ing of ‘refugee sta­tus and in­ter­na­tion­al treaty’, where a lit­tle is­land na­tion of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple must be ex­pect­ed to main­tain open bor­ders to a next-door neigh­bour of 34 mil­lion peo­ple even dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. This is a mat­ter, not for the OAS, but for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Row­ley point­ed out, “Cur­rent­ly, we have closed our bor­ders even to our own cit­i­zens in this pan­dem­ic and would re­sist all ef­forts by oth­ers who are hell-bent on forc­ing open our bor­ders through il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion.

“Un­der the rubric of ‘hu­man­i­tar­i­an’, this in­ter­pre­ta­tion, if ac­cept­ed, will ef­fec­tive­ly prise open our bor­ders to every eco­nom­ic mi­grant, gun run­ner, drug deal­er, hu­man traf­fick­er and South Amer­i­can gang leader/mem­bers. All they will be re­quired to do is make the sev­en-mile boat trip and claim to be ‘refugees’.”

“We staunch­ly sup­port the work of the Unit­ed Na­tions but this threat and the per­sis­tent dis­re­gard for the out­stand­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­forts ex­tend­ed by the peo­ple of TT, do not con­form with the spir­it and pur­pose of the UN­HCR.”

He added, “It is our lit­tle is­land na­tion which fa­cil­i­tat­ed the reg­is­tra­tion of 16,000 Venezue­lan mi­grants and even as we our­selves are strug­gling to cope with our own dif­fi­cul­ties, we have af­ford­ed them com­fort, aid and op­por­tu­ni­ty. If af­ter all that, our na­tion’s im­age is to be tar­nished through the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of il­le­gal pen­e­tra­tion of our bor­ders then cer­tain­ly, that will be the un­kind­est cut of all.

“I call on all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to con­tin­ue to be the hu­mane and car­ing peo­ple that we have demon­strat­ed that we are, as we do not de­monise our mi­grant neigh­bours - but we all con­tin­ue to be pro­tect­ed by the laws of T&T.”

Browne re­sponds to Guai­do

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne was con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia on Venezuela Op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do’s crit­i­cisms of T&T over the mi­grant de­por­ta­tions.

Guai­do’s Op­po­si­tion will be fight­ing Venezuela’s De­cem­ber 6 elec­tions against Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, whom some lo­cal Op­po­si­tion and Venezue­lan forces feel Gov­ern­ment is sym­pa­thet­ic to.

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue, Browne said, “In the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic cir­cum­stances, all stake­hold­ers must be cog­nizant that ram­pant hu­man traf­fick­ing from Venezuela and the as­so­ci­at­ed ex­ploita­tion of women and chil­dren can lead to hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis on both sides of the bor­der.

“Such a trend places in jeop­ardy not on­ly the health and wel­fare of our T&T cit­i­zens but al­so the health and wel­fare of the many thou­sands of Venezue­lans that have of­fi­cial­ly and com­pas­sion­ate­ly been per­mit­ted to live and work in T&T and to ac­cess a wide range of ser­vices in our small is­land na­tion.”