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Friday, July 4, 2025

Six Venezuelans confirmed dead in Delta Amacuro boatwreck

by

1529 days ago
20210427
Venezuelan firefighters with recovered bodies retrieved from the boat that sank off Tucupita on its way to Trinidad last week.

Venezuelan firefighters with recovered bodies retrieved from the boat that sank off Tucupita on its way to Trinidad last week.

COURTESY CIMA360

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

 

As the search con­tin­ues for pas­sen­gers feared dead in a boatwreck in Venezuela’s Delta Amacuro, in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights agen­cies have called for safer path­ways for mi­grants flee­ing Venezuela’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties have re­port­ed that six pas­sen­gers aboard a ves­sel, which cap­sized in a strait of the sea known as Bo­ca de Ser­pi­ente (Snake’s Mouth) around 4 am last Thurs­day, have been con­firmed dead.

Sev­en sur­vivors were res­cued and a dozen more re­main miss­ing.

The Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR), the Unit­ed Na­tions Refugee Agency and the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) have all ex­pressed sad­ness over the in­ci­dent.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, Ed­uar­do Stein, Joint Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of UN­HCR and IOM for Venezue­lan Refugees and Mi­grants, said, “The wa­ters of the Caribbean Sea con­tin­ue to claim the lives of Venezue­lans.

“As the con­di­tions in the coun­try con­tin­ue to de­te­ri­o­rate—all wors­ened by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic—peo­ple con­tin­ue to un­der­take life-threat­en­ing jour­neys.”

He added, “Ship­wrecks, trag­ic deaths at bor­der cross­ings and fur­ther suf­fer­ing are avoid­able, but on­ly if im­me­di­ate and con­cert­ed in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion is mo­bilised to find prag­mat­ic so­lu­tions that put sav­ing lives and pro­tect­ing hu­man rights at the fore­front of any re­sponse.”

Stein al­so said, “The es­tab­lish­ment of reg­u­lar and safe path­ways, in­clud­ing through hu­man­i­tar­i­an visas and fam­i­ly re­uni­fi­ca­tion, as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­tec­tion-sen­si­tive en­try sys­tems and ad­e­quate re­cep­tion mech­a­nisms, can pre­vent the use of ir­reg­u­lar routes, smug­gling and traf­fick­ing.”

Both the UN­HCR and IOM re­it­er­at­ed their readi­ness to lend sup­port and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise in ex­plor­ing prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions to help mi­grants.

“UN­HCR and IOM, as co-lead­ers of the In­ter­a­gency Co­or­di­na­tion Plat­form for refugees and mi­grants from Venezuela (R4V), work with at least 24 oth­er part­ners and gov­ern­ments across the Caribbean to meet the needs of refugees and mi­grants in the sub-re­gion,” the state­ment said.

More than 200,000 Venezue­lans have been liv­ing in the Caribbean, hav­ing fled their home­land to es­cape star­va­tion and des­ti­tu­tion, it said. There are over five mil­lion Venezue­lan refugees and mi­grants around the world.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to Venezuela’s me­dia out­let Tane Tanae Delta, the gov­er­nor of Delta Amacuro state Lize­ta Hernán­dez said yes­ter­day that the armed forces were con­tin­u­ing the search for ten of the miss­ing pas­sen­gers. 

The re­port said six peo­ple have been con­firmed dead and sev­en peo­ple have been res­cued.

“We will not hide any­thing and the guilty must pay with the full weight of the law,” Hernán­dez said.

 The boat­load of over 25 mi­grants had been bound for Trinidad but cap­sized in the Bo­ca around 4 am on Thurs­day. A Venezue­lan com­mer­cial ship op­er­at­ing in the Bo­ca, a strip of wa­ter that sep­a­rates Venezuela from Trinidad, res­cued some of the sur­vivors. 

Oth­ers swam for long dis­tances be­fore be­ing picked up by oth­er boats. It is un­cer­tain whether any made it to Trinidad’s shores. How­ev­er, one body washed ashore at Fullar­ton Beach on Sun­day.

On De­cem­ber 6 last year, 29 peo­ple died when a boat sank about 20 km (12 miles) from the coastal town of Guiria in the coun­try’s north­east­ern state of Su­cre. They too had been head­ing to Trinidad in search of a bet­ter life.


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