Gail Alexan­der

Mem­bers of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty as well as T&T-based Venezue­lan ac­tivists will stage demon­stra­tions at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre this morn­ing "wel­com­ing" Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro with lob­bies con­cern­ing two dif­fer­ent mat­ters which they are re­spec­tive­ly press­ing for.

Maduro was sched­uled to ar­rive in T&T last night for a 11 am meet­ing to­day with Gov­ern­ment at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.Is­lam­ic Front (IF) leader Umar Ab­dul­lah says Mus­lim groups will be lob­by­ing for re­lease of five T&T na­tion­als de­tained in Venezuela on ter­ror­ism charges since 2014.

At­tor­ney for the men's fam­i­lies, Nafeesa Mo­hammed ap­pealed to those at to­day's TT/Venezuela talks, "If Pres­i­dent Maduro wants help from T&T in any way, Venezuela must al­so help us and re­lease the five broth­ers de­tained–this should be a ne­go­ti­at­ing po­si­tion,"

And Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yese­nia Gon­za­les plus Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion Ac­cion De­mo­c­ra­t­i­ca mem­ber An­to­nio Par­rios–who's sought asy­lum in T&T with sev­er­al oth­ers –will al­so be demon­strat­ing, seek­ing talks with Maduro about their coun­try's im­pend­ing col­lapse, and to ask for a date by Oc­to­ber for a ref­er­en­dum.

How­ev­er both Mus­lims and Venezue­lans will be vy­ing for Maduro's at­ten­tion with JTUM mem­bers who will be mount­ing a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty for the Venezue­lan pres­i­dent near Queen's Hall.Se­cu­ri­ty will be tight for the meet­ing which fo­cus­es on en­er­gy, trade and for­eign af­fairs.

Last week Gov­ern­ment said Maduro–whose coun­try is on the verge of eco­nom­ic col­lapse–re­quest­ed the meet­ing. Of­fi­cials ex­pect­ed it would con­tin­ue last Oc­to­ber's talks on en­er­gy, trade se­cu­ri­ty and for­eign af­fairs.

How­ev­er Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley said last Fri­day, Venezuela's sit­u­a­tion would al­so be on the dis­cus­sion ta­ble. He said Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es the sit­u­a­tion is ten­u­ous and in light of Venezuela's eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal is­sues, is mon­i­tor­ing close­ly, in­clud­ing on pos­si­ble refugee in­flux. He said T&T has oblig­a­tions con­cern­ing this un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Row­ley said he knew of peo­ple "seek­ing aid and suc­cor" and com­ing to T&T to buy house­hold items from T&T in­clud­ing LPG gas. He said Gov­ern­ment has to con­sid­er if this ex­por­ta­tion is sus­tain­able. He not­ed some may call on T&T for aid in the over­all mat­ter, but hoped "the sit­u­a­tion wouldn't get that far." Row­ley how­ev­er stressed T&T is "not an un­in­ter­est­ed by-stander" in the Venezue­lan mat­ter.

Maduro will be ac­com­pa­nied by min­is­ters Del­cy Ro­driguez (For­eign Af­fairs), Eu­lo­gio del Pino, (Pe­tro­le­um/Min­ing, Miguel P�rez Abad,( In­dus­try and Com­merce), Alexan­der Y�nez Deleuze, (Latin Amer­i­ca/ Caribbean Af­fairs) and Venezue­lan Am­bass­dor, Coro­mo­to Godoy Calderon,

There has been spec­u­la­tion Maduro may seek some type of as­sis­tance from T&T amid Venezuela's cri­sis. For­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Knowl­son Gift in 2013 said late Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez (Maduro's pre­de­ces­sor) in 2003 when–un­der po­lit­i­cal pres­sure and un­rest–had asked T&T to "do any­thing pos­si­ble" to re­lieve Venezuela's en­er­gy cri­sis. T&T sent 500,000 bar­rels of oil. Chavez lat­er not­ed T&T came to his as­sis­tance in his "dark­est hour."

Mus­lim protests

But if Venezuela needs help, some Mus­lim ac­tivists want rec­i­p­ro­cal treat­ment. IF's Ab­dul­lah said he's called on Mus­lim ac­tivists to come to the area out­side the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre for a prayer vig­il, lob­by­ing for the re­lease of Wade Charles, Do­minic Ja­mal Piti­lal, Asim Luq­man, An­dre Bathers­by and Les­ley Dais­ley. They've been de­tained in Venezuela since 2014 on ter­ror­ism sus­pi­cions.

They were held at ho­tel Sa­bana Grande along with a 22 mem­ber Mus­lim group which went to seek visas for pil­grim­age. That group was lat­er re­leased. The five–from Cen­tral Trinidad mosques–have been sub­ject to court hear­ings.

Ab­dul­lah yes­ter­day called out Mus­lim ac­tivists–in­clud­ing "sis­ters" he said–to demon­strate from 9 am with plac­ards He urged them to stay away from neg­a­tive or deroga­to­ry mes­sages and to fo­cus on the free­dom of the de­tainees. He said if they are moved from the en­trance to the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, they will go to the ad­join­ing play­ing field.

Ab­dul­lah said he spoke to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon two days ago on the de­tainees. Ab­dul­lah added Dil­lion said he's been hav­ing talks with his Venezue­lan coun­ter­part on the is­sue. Ab­dul­lah said he ap­pealed for "good sense" at to­day's meet­ing and was told Gov­ern­ment would see "what it could do."

At­tor­ney Mo­hammed–who is a spe­cial­ist in refugee law–said she'd join the women and chil­dren of the de­tainees' in to­day's demon­stra­tion. She said Glo­ria Charles, one de­tainee's moth­er wants to meet Maduro per­son­al­ly to ap­peal for her son's re­lease.

Moth­er's plea

Charles has a let­ter for Maduro stat­ing her son is the sole bread­win­ner for his fam­i­ly. Charles said the Venezue­lan cri­sis is es­pe­cial­ly hard for the de­tainees who de­pend on peo­ple on the out­side to bring food and items for them.

Charles' let­ter added:

"I'm a moth­er whose heart breaks every day my son is kept away...Af­ter two years in prison my son and the oth­er men are faced with med­ical con­di­tions to which treat­ment is lim­it­ed in Se­bin. There are no med­ica­tions in Venezuela The den­tist hard­ly vis­its."

Rel­a­tives of oth­er de­tainees de­liv­ered a let­ter for Maduro to the Venezue­lan Em­bassy last Fri­day and to Min­is­ter Dil­lon. Mo­hammed said she was pleased with Dil­lon's re­sponse.

Their let­ter stat­ed "We're ap­peal­ing to and fer­vent­ly beg­ging on hu­man­i­tar­i­an grounds to give some con­sid­er­a­tion to the plight of these five Trinida­di­ans... (their) wives have been evict­ed from their place of res­i­dence, chil­dren are liv­ing with low self es­teem due to char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion and not at­tend­ing school. The is­sue of de­pres­sion hov­ers over these women and chil­dren re­main fa­ther­less. .."

"Can you ex­tend the hu­man­ly (sic) in­stinct and re­lease them so they can re­turn home to their fam­i­lies and be the fa­thers they once were, gen­tle and kind to their fam­i­ly? Is it pos­si­ble you can oblit­er­ate the false claims made against them ...They on­ly en­tered your coun­try to pro­cure visas to trav­el to ....Makkah and Mad­i­nah in Sau­di Ara­bia for Um­rah.These men had no in­ten­tion and hadn't been in­volved in any sub­ver­sive ac­tiv­i­ty or il­le­gal ac­tions in­tend­ed to harm any gov­ern­ment or hu­mankind."

The fam­i­lies launched their lob­by on a Mus­lim sta­tion last night (SUN). Dil­lon and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses didn't im­me­di­ate­ly an­swer calls. Maduro re­turns home to­day.

MSJ seeks trade talks

Yese­nia Gon­za­les, an ILP mem­ber, is co-or­di­nat­ing to­day's protest by Venezue­lans, some of whom will be bring­ing emp­ty pots and pans to demon­strate the plight of their coun­try­men . She's seek­ing a meet­ing with Maduro to ask for him for a date by Oc­to­ber for a ref­er­en­dum in their home­land.

Yes­ter­day's Sun­day Guardian high­light­ed how des­per­ate Venezue­lans have in­creas­ing­ly been com­ing to T&T to buy sup­plies, par­tic­u­lar­ly at Ce­dros, a le­gal en­try port.

Gon­za­les added, "Peo­ple are hap­py to raise their voic­es in T&T and will come out, at least 100, but some are afraid of prob­lems en­ter­ing T&T, be­ing treat­ed like refugees. Venezue­lan Op­po­si­tion Ac­cion De­mo­c­ra­t­i­ca mem­ber Par­rios said he was one of five AD mem­bers who's sought asy­lum in T&T since last Oc­to­ber. He said he's go­ing through a process with Im­mi­gra­tion on this and their mem­bers fled Venezuela due to po­lit­i­cal ha­rass­ment. He said he'd been jailed for sev­er­al days and can­not re­turn.

How­ev­er the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) which sup­ports Maduro hopes to see move­ment at to­day's meet­ing on de­vel­op­ment of the "cross-bor­der" nat­ur­al gas fields and agree­ment on "barter trade" be­tween both coun­tries, with lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers sell­ing prod­ucts to Venezuela and that coun­try sell­ing crude oil to T&T. Al­so sug­gest­ed was dis­cus­sion on the fea­si­bil­i­ty of T&T sup­ply­ing Venezuela with elec­tri­cal pow­er.