A group of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents led by Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion politi­cian Ed­win Luzar­do de­liv­ered a let­ter to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Em­bassy in Cara­cas yes­ter­day, de­mand­ing an end to “the mis­treat­ment of Venezue­lans.”

The group al­so called for “jus­tice, re­spect for the lives of all Venezue­lan mi­grants” and urged the T&T au­thor­i­ties not to con­tin­ue to be “ac­com­plices of the Nicolás Maduro regime for crimes against hu­man­i­ty, for not com­ply­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al treaties for the pro­tec­tion of refugees.”

The let­ter was de­liv­ered to an em­bassy of­fi­cial by Lus­tay Fran­co, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Fed­er­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tres of the Cen­tral Uni­ver­si­ty of Venezuela (FCU-UCV).

Luzar­do ac­cused the Maduro regime and the T&T Gov­ern­ment of vi­o­lat­ing the right to life of Venezue­lan mi­grants.

Yes­ter­day’s ac­tion fol­lowed the drown­ing of a re­port­ed 20 Venezue­lan mi­grants en route to T&T from Güiria. Res­i­dents there held a can­dle­light pro­ces­sion in mem­o­ry of the vic­tims on Mon­day. Venezue­lan jour­nal­ist Ar­i­ana Agre­da re­port­ed that rel­a­tives of the vic­tims are claim­ing that the ar­rest of Luis Alí Martínez, own­er ves­sel that sank, was un­fair. They said Martínez, who has been charged with traf­fick­ing in per­sons, is the fa­ther of one of the de­ceased.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the Of­fice of the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights called on gov­ern­ments to halt the un­safe mar­itime re­turns of mi­grants.

“Once again, we call on gov­ern­ments to stop re­turns at sea in vi­o­la­tion of the prin­ci­ple of non-re­foule­ment and the pro­hi­bi­tion of col­lec­tive ex­pul­sions and sus­pend all forced re­turns amid the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic to safe­guard the health of mi­grants and com­mu­ni­ties,” said High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights Michelle Bachelet.

Mean­while, the bod­ies of 19 of the 21 drown­ing vic­tims have been iden­ti­fied

Re­ports are that a tem­po­rary morgue was set up at the Güiria dock where a group of pathol­o­gists car­ried out au­top­sies on the bod­ies. This was con­firmed in a po­lice re­port.

The per­sons iden­ti­fied were Giomarys Jaime,18, Án­gel Subero, 30, Yun­nior Salaver­ria, 18, Pe­dro Aguil­era, 23, Vian­nelys Moreno, 34, Dar­i­angelys Martínez Rausseo, 2, Dulce Pérez, 22, Jua­na Cara­bal­lo, 67, Roxy Rigaud, 19, Anal­ize Martínez, 6, In­es Subero, 34, Raudelys Salazar, 23, Gabriela Subero, 33, Dy­lan As­tudil­lo, 3, Claud­is Es­te­ban, 21, Jo­saidis Dias Acos­ta, 26, Daniel Patinez, 8, San­tos Su­cre, 38, and José Nat­era, 33.

The bod­ies of three men are yet to be iden­ti­fied.