Shal­iza Has­sanali

Where are the wit­ness­es to the fa­tal shoot­ing of one-year-old Ya Elvis San­toyo?

This was the burn­ing ques­tion Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts called on the Gov­ern­ment to an­swer, as the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and T&T Coast Guard con­tin­ue their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ba­by’s hor­rif­ic death.

Robert raised the is­sue dur­ing a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, stat­ing that the trag­ic cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent have left more ques­tions than an­swers.

He en­quired from in­ves­ti­ga­tors prob­ing the mat­ter to tell the coun­try where are the wit­ness­es — those who were on board the Venezue­lan pirogue that was fired up­on last Sat­ur­day by the T&T Coast Guard when it il­le­gal­ly en­tered T&T wa­ters.

The in­ter­cep­tion of the ves­sel from Tu­cu­pi­ta re­sult­ed in the shoot­ing death of ba­by San­toya, as he was be­ing held in the arms of his moth­er Darie Elvis Eliag­nis Sara­bia on board the pirogue.

Sara­bia is un­der po­lice guard at the hos­pi­tal as she re­cov­ers from gun­shot wounds she sus­tained on the boat.

Less than a week af­ter the high sea dra­ma that grabbed in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion, a re­lease from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry stat­ed that 35 of the 37 mi­grants on the boat had been de­port­ed.

In light of the mat­ter, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has asked for an ‘ex­haus­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion’ in­to the shoot­ing and the Unit­ed Na­tions has al­so spo­ken out against it.

An­gered by the turn of events, Roberts sought an­swers re­gard­ing the wit­ness­es (mi­grants) who were swift­ly repa­tri­at­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

“Where are the peo­ple who were out there... who ex­pe­ri­enced this dev­as­tat­ing tragedy? Where are the 35 peo­ple...es­pe­cial­ly the 20 adults? Why were they de­port­ed in the wee hours of the morn­ing,” Roberts asked.

He said this was done even though the mi­grants through their at­tor­neys Criston J Williams and Sid­diq Man­zano re­quest­ed from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds that they be giv­en “a per­mit for them to stay so they can as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and get­ting to the truth.”

Roberts said it is un­sure if these wit­ness­es pro­vid­ed state­ments to the au­thor­i­ties.

He al­so is seek­ing an­swers as to whether the Coast Guard end­ed their chase clos­er to Trinidad or in Venezuela?

“If it went from close to Trinidad to clos­er to Venezuela it means that the wit­ness ac­counts that they were turn­ing back and head­ing back to Venezuela were true. If they were turn­ing back and head­ing to Venezuela, job com­plete...job ac­com­plish, why shoot? Why kill? If you kill in those cir­cum­stances it is mur­der.”

Ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to Venezue­lans and the fam­i­ly of ba­by San­toyo, Roberts dis­missed a re­cent Face­book post by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the shoot­ing by the Coast Guard was “an ac­ci­dent.”

Row­ley made the com­ment as he sought to crit­i­cise Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of ac­cus­ing the Coast Guard of­fi­cers of mur­der.

But Roberts called on the PM to “Rest Kam­la. Leave Kam­la,” stat­ing that the UNC will en­sure that this mat­ter is not swept un­der the car­pet like the AV Drilling oil scan­dal, the Dar­ryl Smith af­fair and the ap­point­ment of a COVID-19 com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate the 3,000 plus peo­ple who died of the dis­ease.

Roberts ac­cused the PM of mak­ing state­ments with­out an in­de­pen­dent unit be­ing ap­point­ed or hav­ing a shred of ev­i­dence.

He said to shoot at ba­bies and moth­ers are not part of prop­er mil­i­tary pro­ce­dures or se­cu­ri­ty pro­tec­tion of the Coast Guard.

“It does not mean that you breach these rules that we have and are sig­na­to­ry to and all the treaties that we have....this is the rec­om­mend­ed prin­ci­ples and guide­lines on hu­man rights and in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders.”

Roberts said there were too many unan­swered ques­tions that left him puz­zled.

He said while Row­ley stat­ed that our bor­der pa­trol at­tempt­ed to stop a craft that re­fused to com­ply, Roberts, queried if that was a fact.

“Do we know that? How do we know that? Where are the wit­ness­es state­ments? Where is the in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion and where are the con­clu­sions?”

While the PM stat­ed that the mi­grants act­ed ag­gres­sive­ly to­wards law­ful, rea­son­able and pro­fes­sion­al or­ders un­der in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols and law and “Our of­fi­cer on pa­trol un­der pro­fes­sion­al or­ders at­tempt­ed to dis­able the craft in the dark­ness of the ocean. The craft could eas­i­ly have been car­ry­ing any car­go of guns, am­mu­ni­tion, killers or any­thing on the move. There was an ac­ci­dent in which un­for­tu­nate­ly a pas­sen­ger child was re­gret­tably killed,” Roberts said the in­ci­dent can not be de­scribed as an ac­ci­dent.

“That is one off the ta­ble com­plete­ly. It can­not be an ac­ci­dent.”

Roberts said while the PM stat­ed that the Coast Guard and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice have ini­ti­at­ed a probe, he won­dered if “the Coast Guard is go­ing to in­ves­ti­gate the Coast Guard. Is that go­ing to suf­fice for the en­tire world that is await­ing an in­de­pen­dent foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion to say what took place in the wa­ters of T&T... that Coast Guard, he un­to him­self go­ing to in­ves­ti­gate or the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice that has just gone through a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis?”

He said the UN­HCR has stat­ed that no­body should have to lose their lives in their search for safe­ty, pro­tec­tion and new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Unicef al­so states that “no mi­grant child should ever die whether trav­el­ling with their par­ents or alone,” Roberts said.

Roberts al­so cit­ed Ar­ti­cle 2 of the UN Con­ven­tion of the rights of the child of which T&T is a sig­na­to­ry that “they must pro­vide safe­guard of all chil­dren ir­re­spec­tive of their na­tion­al­i­ty or sta­tus.”

Call­ing for T&T to stop the xeno­pho­bia, Robert en­quired “Where is the in­de­pen­dent com­mit­tee? Where are the wit­ness­es? Where are the foren­sics? Where is the ves­sel?”

The Coast Guard ves­sel, Roberts said is equipped with a for­ward-look­ing in­frared (FLIR) sys­tem.

“It’s a ther­mal imag­ing sys­tem which can give the cap­tain and of­fi­cers on board the abil­i­ty to see what is on a ves­sel. They can see up to six nau­ti­cal miles.”

Again, Roberts raised ques­tions if the pa­trolling Coast Guard ves­sel was able “to see 37 ther­mal mass­es on a pirogue. Was the FLIR sys­tem work­ing? Or was it not func­tion­ing? Was the Coast Guard trained prop­er­ly to utilise this tech­nol­o­gy? Or did we spend hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on a ves­sel that is use­less?”

If the Coast Guard was in the cov­er of dark­ness, Roberts ques­tioned “why then, did the of­fi­cer in charge de­ploy the light craft? Be­cause if you do not know what you are fac­ing... you do not put your of­fi­cers in harm’s way by putting them in a small­er craft telling them to go and in­ves­ti­gate...if it was in fact peo­ple com­ing to over­throw Trinidad.”

Roberts said he found it strange that the Coast Guard ves­sel which can with­stand at­tacks from small­er boats claimed that they were be­ing rammed by the Venezue­lan pirogue.

He said if the pirogue was in­ter­cept­ed in Moru­ga with one func­tion­ing en­gine the boat could not have been trav­el­ling at break­neck speed.

He said the Coast Guard could have fol­lowed the limp­ing ves­sel or “use dri­ving tac­tics” un­til it ran out of fu­el.

“Why you had to shoot the en­gine? How could you shoot at an en­gine if a boat is com­ing to ram you?”

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