Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Venezuela’s Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez has lashed out at T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, call­ing the deaths of two T&T na­tion­als killed in the lat­est US strikes “a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy.”

“The US Army should kill them all. A self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy by Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad when she ap­plaud­ed the US war plan against Venezuela. The bombs al­so ex­tra­ju­di­cial­ly mur­dered hum­ble cit­i­zens of her coun­try. Venezuela warned: the US Gov­ern­ment in­tends to dis­rupt peace in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. The uni­ty of our peo­ples is the guar­an­tee of peace!” Ro­dríguez wrote on her Telegram page with an ac­com­pa­ny­ing im­age of yes­ter­day’s T&T Guardian front page ar­ti­cle.

T&T na­tion­als Chad Joseph and Richie Sama­roo were re­port­ed­ly killed on Tues­day, when the US mil­i­tary car­ried out its fifth strike on Venezue­lan ves­sels at sea, al­leged­ly trans­port­ing il­le­gal drugs.

In all, 27 peo­ple have been killed in five air strikes by the US, with Trump say­ing the suc­cess in the seas may now lead to a land at­tack on traf­fick­ers.

Af­ter the US strike on an al­leged Venezue­lan drug ves­sel on Sep­tem­ber 2, the Prime Min­is­ter praised the US ad­min­is­tra­tion for its ac­tion. She urged them to “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly”. She said she had no sym­pa­thy for drug traf­fick­ers and then spoke about the im­pact il­le­gal drugs have on T&T. De­spite crit­i­cism and con­dem­na­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dou­bled down on her com­ments, say­ing she was putting T&T cit­i­zens first.

Mean­while, yes­ter­day, Great Venezuela Youth Mis­sion pres­i­dent Gé­ne­sis Garvett, added her voice, say­ing the Unit­ed States’ lat­est mil­i­tary strikes on a Venezue­lan ves­sel where two T&T na­tion­als were killed shows it has “no com­pas­sion or re­spect.”

Speak­ing on a news pro­gramme, Garvett, a mem­ber of Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment and Par­lia­ment, said the US ad­min­is­tra­tion is not look­ing out for the in­ter­ests of T&T, Venezuela or any oth­er coun­try.

“Worse than be­ing an en­e­my of the Unit­ed States is be­ing its friend, be­cause they tru­ly have no com­pas­sion or re­spect, not even for their main al­lies, or for those who be­lieve they are sav­ing them­selves by echo­ing im­pe­ri­al­ism’s in­ten­tions,” Garvett said.

She added, “But ob­vi­ous­ly, for his­tor­i­cal records, the mur­der of young Caribbean peo­ple such as Colom­bians, Venezue­lans, and Trinida­di­ans can­not go un­pun­ished. How do they (Amer­i­cans) de­stroy the tar­get with­out prov­ing to the world that what was in the boat was drugs?”

Guardian Me­dia’s news re­ports on the lat­est de­vel­op­ment seemed to have gone vi­ral among Venezue­lan news out­lets.

On Thurs­day, the T&T Guardian’s lead sto­ry Two Tri­nis killed in US Strike, was shared on sev­er­al news web­sites on the South Amer­i­can coun­try. Sev­er­al Venezue­lan me­dia hous­es al­so post­ed the video of CNC3’s news re­port on the deaths.

Pro-gov­ern­ment news web­site Venezue­lanews, on its X plat­form, post­ed a video of CNC’3s news re­port as did out­lets such as La Igua­na and El Ul­ti­mas Noti­cias.

Un­der Noti­cias’ post, a Venezue­lan wrote about T&T, “Ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha. Yes, it is clear, es­pe­cial­ly from T&T, that 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is in­volved with nar­cos.”

An­oth­er Venezue­lan added, “This is thanks to the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad, who au­tho­rised Trump to op­er­ate in the Caribbean. But Venezuela warned Trinidad that they were giv­ing him a free let­ter en­dan­ger­ing the lives of fish­er­men.”