Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al has writ­ten an open let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley stat­ing that while it wel­comes the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to reg­is­ter Venezue­lans in this coun­try, it wants as­sur­ances that the con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion re­ceived will not fall in­to the hands of the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment.

The let­ter dat­ed May 28 was writ­ten by Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al’s Amer­i­c­as Di­rec­tor Eri­ka Gue­vara Rosas.

Gov­ern­ment sched­uled to start its two-week process of reg­is­ter­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants in this coun­try to­day.

Ear­li­er this month Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al is­sued a re­port on Venezuela ti­tled, Hunger for jus­tice: Crimes against hu­man­i­ty in Venezuela which de­tailed “how se­lec­tive ex­tra­ju­di­cial ex­e­cu­tions, ar­bi­trary de­ten­tions, and deaths and in­juries caused by the ex­ces­sive use of force by the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties or by per­sons or groups of per­sons act­ing with the au­tho­riza­tion, sup­port or ac­qui­es­cence of the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, may con­sti­tute crimes against hu­man­i­ty and re­quire an ur­gent re­sponse from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

The group stat­ed: “Prime Min­is­ter, those flee­ing Venezuela are over­whelm­ing­ly not ‘eco­nom­ic mi­grants’ from whom your gov­ern­ment needs to ‘pro­tect (the) in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go’ as you stat­ed in a re­cent press con­fer­ence, but peo­ple in need of in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion flee­ing a sit­u­a­tion in which their lives, se­cu­ri­ty, and free­dom are at risk,” the let­ter stat­ed.

“In this con­text, Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al wel­comes Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­ci­sion to of­fer so­lu­tions that would help Venezue­lans gain le­gal res­i­den­cy. Nev­er­the­less, Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al has a se­ries of ques­tions re­gard­ing the gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed reg­is­tra­tion process, based on the lim­it­ed pub­licly avail­able in­for­ma­tion,” it stat­ed.

One of the con­cerns raised by Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al was the two-week du­ra­tion of the reg­is­tra­tion.

The Unit­ed Na­tions has pro­vid­ed sta­tis­tics that there are be­tween 40,000 and 60,000 Venezue­lans in T&T.

Act­ing prime min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ques­tioned that fig­ure at this week’s post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence say­ing there are on­ly 9,080 over­stays be­tween 2016 to now and 12,257 asy­lum-seek­er ap­pli­ca­tions from Venezue­lans at the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) for the same pe­ri­od.

“Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40,000 Venezue­lans in Trinidad and To­ba­go, if not more. Based on gov­ern­ment in­for­ma­tion, the pro­posed pe­ri­od for reg­is­tra­tion will on­ly last for two weeks, and reg­is­ter ap­prox­i­mate­ly 28,000 peo­ple, be­tween 31 May and 14 June 2019,” the let­ter stat­ed.

“Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al is con­cerned that the pro­posed pe­ri­od is like­ly to be too short to reg­is­ter such a large num­ber of po­ten­tial ap­pli­cants and would like to re­ceive fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about how your gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es to process all the ap­pli­cants in such a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od of time, and how it plans to safe­guard the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of those that reg­is­ter and en­sure that it does not fall in­to the hands of the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties.

“We would al­so like fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about what will hap­pen to those mi­grants and refugees that are un­able to reg­is­ter dur­ing this time­frame,” it stat­ed.

Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al said while it wel­comes states that pro­pose al­ter­na­tives for Venezue­lans to gain le­gal res­i­den­cy, the pro­posed reg­is­tra­tion process does not ex­empt T&T from its oblig­a­tions un­der the Con­ven­tion re­lat­ing to the Sta­tus of the Refugees (1951 Refugee Con­ven­tion) and its Pro­to­col (1967), to re­spect the rights of those seek­ing asy­lum.

“Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al would like fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about what op­tions will be made avail­able for asy­lum-seek­ers and rec­og­nized refugees fol­low­ing ex­pi­ra­tion of the one-year amnesty pe­ri­od. We re­mind your gov­ern­ment that asy­lum-seek­ers and refugees are pro­tect­ed from forcible re­turn to a coun­try in which their life or free­dom may be in dan­ger on ac­count of race, re­li­gion, na­tion­al­i­ty, mem­ber­ship in a par­tic­u­lar so­cial group or po­lit­i­cal opin­ion. As such, de­por­ta­tion of those reg­is­tered with UN­HCR would be con­trary to in­ter­na­tion­al law,” the let­ter stat­ed.

Amnesty In­ter­na­tion won­dered what would hap­pen to those who choose not to reg­is­ter.

It called on the coun­try to pass refugee leg­is­la­tion, con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al law and stan­dards