KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Fish­er­men and sea­men are be­ing urged to stay close to the shore amid fears of be­ing bombed by the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary, which con­tin­ues its an­ti-nar­cotics op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean Sea.

The warn­ing fol­lows the deaths of two lo­cal fish­er­men, Richie Sama­roo and Chad “Char­po” Joseph, who were among six peo­ple re­port­ed­ly killed when the US bombed a small ves­sel it claimed was car­ry­ing nar­cotics in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters ear­li­er this week.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Gary Aboud, said the men were most like­ly trans­port­ing food or live­stock for sale or tran­ship­ment. He con­demned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment for pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ing US mis­sile strikes on sus­pect­ed drug ves­sels.

Aboud said it was fright­en­ing that T&T’s leader would en­dorse such ac­tions, call­ing her com­ments “out­ra­geous, vi­o­lent, ig­no­rant, ag­gres­sive, undiplo­mat­ic and un­be­com­ing of a se­nior coun­sel.”

“Our peo­ple pay the price. I do not rec­om­mend that any of our boys move fur­ther than a mile from shore. I strong­ly ad­vise all sea­men to trav­el at five to ten knots be­cause, at any mo­ment, you can be bombed out of the sea. Even if it’s an ac­ci­dent, they will say, ‘We’re sor­ry, we thought...’ This is not what a re­spon­si­ble Prime Min­is­ter should be bring­ing to our shores and our peo­ple,” Aboud said.

He lament­ed that fam­i­lies were left griev­ing, say­ing chil­dren had lost fa­thers, wives had lost hus­bands, and com­mu­ni­ties had lost friends.

Ad­dress­ing the broad­er smug­gling is­sue, Aboud said around 25 com­modi­ties, such as shrimp, hon­ey, and live­stock, en­ter T&T il­le­gal­ly from Venezuela for lo­cal con­sump­tion. He not­ed that the trade is lu­cra­tive, which en­cour­ages many run­ners.

He said the move­ment of crack co­caine and mar­i­jua­na from Colom­bia has per­sist­ed since his child­hood, and he feared it may nev­er end. Cit­ing a Unit­ed Na­tions re­port, Aboud said on­ly about eight per cent of co­caine from Colom­bia pass­es through the Caribbean Sea, with most ship­ments rout­ed through Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

Aboud ar­gued that T&T has “sur­ren­dered its sov­er­eign­ty” by al­low­ing for­eign forces to con­duct dead­ly op­er­a­tions in re­gion­al wa­ters with­out ju­di­cial over­sight. He de­scribed the mis­sile at­tacks as ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings that should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court.

“In­stead of sac­ri­fic­ing our sov­er­eign­ty and al­low­ing our lo­cal boys or Venezue­lans to be mur­dered, we should fo­cus on re­build­ing co­op­er­a­tion. We fish to­geth­er with Venezue­lans in the same wa­ters. Many of our men trans­port fish, shrimp, and meat to Trinidad for sale,” he said, em­pha­sis­ing the shared fam­i­ly, trade, and cul­tur­al ties be­tween both coun­tries.

Aboud ques­tioned why US mil­i­tary ac­tion tar­gets Venezue­lan ves­sels in­stead of mon­i­tor­ing the sev­en Amer­i­can mil­i­tary bases in Colom­bia.