The Venezue­lan Coun­cil for In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions (Cov­ri), has asked the au­thor­i­ties in that coun­try to take ac­tion against the T&T Gov­ern­ment over the re­cent de­por­ta­tion of 16 mi­grant chil­dren

The group said in a state­ment: “These 16 chil­dren along with nine Venezue­lan mi­grant women were thrown in­to the sea in a small roof­less boat, with lit­tle food and gaso­line, de­spite stormy con­di­tions. They ar­rived many hours lat­er in the La Bar­ra trib­u­tary of the Orinoco Delta show­ing symp­toms of de­hy­dra­tion.”

Cov­ri strong­ly con­demned the ac­tion, claim­ing the de­por­ta­tion oc­curred short­ly be­fore au­thor­i­ties here had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to eval­u­ate the cas­es and the con­di­tions of the young­mi­grants, who left the coun­try who were flee­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Venezuela

They are de­mand­ing “the pro­tec­tion of the 16 Venezue­lan chil­dren and the prompt re­uni­fi­ca­tion with their fam­i­lies.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued: “We al­so urge you to avoid new de­ten­tions and/or forced and reck­less de­por­ta­tions of Venezue­lan chil­dren.”

Not­ing a re­cent re­port by the UN­HCR which states that at least 55 Venezue­lan chil­dren have been de­port­ed from T&T this year, Cov­ri called on Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to strong­ly con­demn “such an abom­inable act, de­mand an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and de­nounce the forced and reck­less de­por­ta­tions of Venezue­lan chil­dren from Trinidad and To­ba­go be­fore in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies such as the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), UN­HCR, the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM), the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (Unicef), and the Of­fice of the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights, Michelle Bachelet.”

The group added: “We recog­nise the im­pact of the Venezue­lan mi­gra­to­ry cri­sis in a de­vel­op­ing coun­try like Trinidad and To­ba­go. There are around 40,000 Venezue­lans in the twin is­lands, of which 2,514 are rec­og­nized as refugees and 24,169 have pend­ing refugee ap­pli­ca­tions, ac­cord­ing to UN­HCR.

The state­ment came one day af­ter a Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment of­fi­icial ac­cused that coun­try’s op­po­si­tion of en­cour­ag­ing the in­flux of mi­grants in­to T&T.

Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, speak­ing dur­ing his Con del Ma­zo Dan­do tele­vi­sion pro­gramme on Venezuela’s VTV chan­nel,said the mi­grant prob­lem”is the con­se­quence of a cam­paign pro­mot­ed by the op­po­si­tion” en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to leave the coun­try.

“How im­moral, very mis­er­able. All this caused by them, a great cam­paign, that Venezue­lans leave their coun­try,” he said.