RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ce­dros fish­er­men said they are fear­ful of reprisal from Venezuela’s Guardia Na­cional fol­low­ing the fa­tal shoot­ing of a one-year-old ba­by by T&T Coast Guard, who re­port­ed­ly fired at a Venezue­lan ves­sel, trans­port­ing 43 Venezue­lans to Trinidad.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, the pres­i­dent of the Ica­cos Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Es­ook Ali claimed that fol­low­ing Tues­day’s state­ment from Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro that there must be an ex­haus­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Trinida­di­an fish­er­men have re­ceived a tip-off from their sources in Tu­cu­pi­ta that they would be shot if they were found in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

He did not named any source and could not pro­vide any de­tails to sup­port his al­le­ga­tion.

“The whole fish­ing vil­lage at this point is at a stand­still be­cause they are afraid and we know how Venezue­lans op­er­ate. We have re­ceived threats that they will take re­venge on this in­ci­dent. We are ask­ing why did our Coast Guard use this amount of ex­ces­sive force? These peo­ple didn’t shoot at our Coast Guard. Why should our Coast Guard shoot and why should we, the fish­er­men suf­fer for this?” Ali asked.

The Coast Guard, in a re­lease, stat­ed that they im­ple­ment­ed their pro­to­cols to stop the pirogue by tak­ing out its out­board en­gine af­ter which it was dis­cov­ered that Darie Elig­nis was shot and her ba­by died in her arms.

Fish vendors at King’s Wharf, San Fernando, yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Ali said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion must be done on the con­duct of the T&T Coast Guard. 

“Right now we have about 50 fish­ing pirogues an­chored and that is about 10 per cent of the 500- plus fish­er­men that work in the south west­ern penin­su­lar,” Ali said.

At the Fullar­ton Fish­ing Port, a spokesman from the as­so­ci­a­tion said on­ly 25 ves­sels went out to sea.

He said many of the fish­er­men did not want their names called in fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion. But he al­so claimed he knew of the threats.

Coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros Shankar Teelucks­ingh said the in­ci­dent was an alarm­ing de­vel­op­ment.

“Our fish­er­men are un­com­fort­able. It is quite alarm­ing and our fish­er­men are al­so un­com­fort­able by the re­sponse of our own Coast Guard in re­cent times where they have been threat­ened at sea and are beat­en,” Teelucks­ingh said.

“We want the Prime Min­is­ter to deal with this quick­ly be­fore it es­ca­lates. We need to hear from the Venezue­lan con­sulate at Cara­cas and that mes­sage has to go to Tu­cu­pi­ta so we can have a re­port and the footage show­ing what took place at sea. We need a thor­ough and clear re­port of what tran­spired,” Teelucks­ingh said.

He said some­times, the nets of lo­cal fish­er­men may drift in­to the Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry and apart from fac­ing the Guardia Na­cionale, fish­er­men he al­so claimed, faced abuse from the T&T Coast Guard.

Fishermen head out to sea from King’s Wharf, San Fernando, yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

“Three weeks ago, our T&T Coast Guard of­fi­cers came on board a ves­sel and beat the fish­er­men,” Teelucks­ingh, he al­so claimed.

He said Venezue­lans are not to be trust­ed as Fish­ing Treaties were signed be­fore and they were al­ways bro­ken.

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co­op­er­a­tive said fish­ing was con­tin­u­ing as usu­al but they were still be­ing vig­i­lant if they ven­ture near the Venezue­lan bor­der.

At the Moru­ga fish­ing port, all fish­ing ves­sels op­er­at­ed as usu­al.

A spokesman from the Moru­ga Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, claimed he was locked up by the Guardia Na­cional three times but was al­ways treat­ed with re­spect by the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties.