Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo is de­scrib­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­fer­ence in Venezuela’s af­fairs as “shame­ful.”

Ca­bel­lo al­so added that “cer­tain­ly, the cit­i­zens of T&T are not proud of their lead­ers for tak­ing shame­ful po­si­tions.”

Ca­bel­lo’s lat­est con­dem­na­tion of T&T came af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment last Sat­ur­day, in which she said she would al­low Unit­ed States forces to ac­cess the coun­try’s ter­ri­to­ry to de­fend Guyana, should Venezuela de­cide to at­tack that na­tion.

His crit­i­cism is just the lat­est in a long line of in­sults and at­tacks against T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter over the last few months, dur­ing which time he even called her “crazy” and ac­cused T&T of har­bour­ing ter­ror­ists wish­ing to desta­bilise Venezuela.

Ca­bel­lo, who spoke yes­ter­day af­ter­noon in a tele­vised ad­dress on Venezuela’s suc­cess­es in re­duc­ing the drug trade, said, “We are not at­tack­ing any­one; we are the ones be­ing at­tacked, and the on­ly truth is that the Es­se­qui­bo is ours.”

In this re­gard, Ca­bel­lo clar­i­fied that “Venezuela is not at­tack­ing any­one, and what is clear is that the sun of Venezuela ris­es in the Es­se­qui­bo, and that is not up for dis­cus­sion with any­one; call it Trinidad, call it who­ev­er. We are the ones be­ing at­tacked, and it’s a lie... they are hyp­ocrites.”

He al­so claimed that “a child was re­cent­ly mur­dered on a boat car­ry­ing Venezue­lans,” while em­pha­sis­ing that “we have had to fight with so many peo­ple. How many times have they threat­ened Venezuela’s 19th-cen­tu­ry Lib­er­a­tor (Simón) Bolí­var? We are de­ter­mined to be free!”

Ca­bel­lo em­pha­sised that Venezuela will con­tin­ue to de­fend its le­git­i­mate sov­er­eign­ty against any ex­ter­nal threat.

He al­so re­it­er­at­ed that the dis­cus­sion on the Es­se­qui­bo is “non-ne­go­tiable.”

—Raphael John-Lall