DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

“We do not re­spond well to threats at all.”

This was the de­fi­ant stance tak­en by For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, mak­ing it clear that this coun­try would not be in­tim­i­dat­ed.

His com­ments came af­ter Venezue­lan De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López said Trinidad and To­ba­go, along with Guyana, could face reprisals if their ter­ri­to­ries were used by the Unit­ed States in any mil­i­tary ac­tion against Venezuela.

“To those who sent a writ­ten state­ment from the Unit­ed States, I am re­fer­ring to the gov­ern­ments of the Co­op­er­a­tive Re­pub­lic of Guyana and the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, who have played along. I say to you, well, if they at­tack from your ter­ri­to­ry, you will al­so re­ceive a re­sponse, and that is le­git­i­mate de­fence,” Padri­no warned.

Last Thurs­day, Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez al­so cau­tioned, “Don’t even think about it.”

Sobers stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment would safe­guard its sov­er­eign­ty while sup­port­ing US ef­forts to com­bat transna­tion­al crime in the re­gion.

“We all, in the South­ern Caribbean, should be hap­py for the lev­el of in­ter­ven­tion that is tak­ing place by the US here to fi­nal­ly have a zone of peace,” he said.

“Any oth­er con­ver­sa­tion, con­trary to that, has to be com­ing from some­body who is hap­py with the state of af­fairs that we in­her­it­ed as an ad­min­is­tra­tion, which is a mur­der­ous, run­away horse Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty where crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty is af­fect­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­tries with­in Cari­com,” he added.

The min­is­ter in­sist­ed that T&T was “in 100 per cent sup­port of Amer­i­can in­ter­ven­tion in this par­tic­u­lar case” and stressed that re­la­tions with Cara­cas re­main in­tact.

“And to all else who threat­ens about who there, and who this, and who that, and who not, and who com­ing, and who go­ing. That’s their busi­ness. They can say what they want in Venezuela with the great­est of re­spect,” he said.

“To the Gov­ern­ment and to the peo­ple of Venezuela, as far as I’m con­cerned, we are still on very good terms.”

Sobers said he main­tained a strong work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero. He al­so ad­dressed com­ments from Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, who ques­tioned whether Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was be­ing guid­ed by oth­ers, com­par­ing her stance to that of US Sen­a­tor Mar­co Ru­bio, whom he la­belled “the lord of death and war”.

“She takes no in­struc­tions from any­one,” Sobers said.

“We are a sov­er­eign coun­try, and our de­ci­sions are made by virtue of a Cab­i­net that meets and makes de­ci­sions for the peace and the bet­ter­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

De­por­ta­tion de­lay

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter al­so re­vealed that the de­por­ta­tion of 200 Venezue­lans has been de­layed by what he de­scribed as “cer­tain steps” tak­en on Venezuela’s end, though he de­clined to give de­tails, cit­ing “mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty”.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised Cara­cas on Mon­day for stalling the repa­tri­a­tion of what she de­scribed as “200 crim­i­nal mi­grants” for two months.

Sobers ex­plained that the de­por­ta­tion process falls un­der the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty. He not­ed that for­eign­ers can be de­port­ed if they en­ter the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, com­mit a crim­i­nal of­fence, or work with­out a per­mit.

The de­por­ta­tion can be stayed if in­di­vid­u­als qual­i­fy through birth or de­scent. He ac­knowl­edged T&T’s oblig­a­tions un­der the UN Refugee Con­ven­tion but stressed that do­mes­tic law takes prece­dence.

“The Gov­ern­ment will de­port peo­ple, il­le­gal per­sons with­in this coun­try, who, one, en­tered il­le­gal­ly; two, who en­tered legal­ly but breached the terms and con­di­tions that were placed up­on their pass­port by way of the stamp when they en­tered the coun­try legal­ly; three, per­sons who en­tered legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly and they’ve com­mit­ted crim­i­nal acts with­in the coun­try—those are the class­es of per­sons that the gov­ern­ment will de­port.

“And if, out of those class­es of per­sons, you have peo­ple who have at­tempt­ed to claim refugee sta­tus through the UN­HCR, or through oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, but they fall with­in those cat­e­gories by break­ing the law, then ab­solute­ly, we will de­port you.”

How­ev­er, for­mer for­eign and Cari­com af­fairs min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of mis­han­dling re­la­tions with Venezuela.

“This reck­less pos­ture will take a long time to re­pair and will have neg­a­tive ef­fects on var­i­ous as­pects of im­por­tant work with our largest and near­est neigh­bour in a range of ar­eas, in­clud­ing im­mi­gra­tion col­lab­o­ra­tion, en­er­gy col­lab­o­ra­tion, search and res­cue, fish­eries, and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween our coast guard and their coun­ter­parts,” he said.

Browne added that un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, sim­i­lar de­por­ta­tions were car­ried out “with­out fan­fare, provo­ca­tion, or un­due ten­sion” through es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic chan­nels.

He al­so crit­i­cised what he called “in­sult­ing com­men­tary” from the Prime Min­is­ter di­rect­ed at Colom­bia’s Pres­i­dent af­ter Bo­gotá re­quest­ed as­sis­tance in lo­cat­ing the bod­ies of 11 Venezue­lans killed dur­ing a US op­er­a­tion tar­get­ing sus­pect­ed traf­fick­ers.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero, who said he was await­ing clear­ance to re­spond. How­ev­er, he for­ward­ed re­marks from Pres­i­dent Maduro, who, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence on Mon­day, said, “Al­though the com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the US are bro­ken, we keep the min­i­mum com­mu­ni­ca­tion nec­es­sary to bring back our mi­grants, which is a top pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment and Venezue­lan fam­i­lies.”