Gail Alexan­der

The T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) have em­barked on in­ves­ti­ga­tions aris­ing from last Sat­ur­day’s un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a Coast Guard ves­sel and a Venezue­lan ves­sel which re­sult­ed in a Venezue­lan child be­ing shot and killed.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds stat­ed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, ex­press­ing deep­est con­do­lences to the child’s par­ents.

Hinds was re­spond­ing to a query from UNC sen­a­tor Wade Mark whether an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the cir­cum­stance of the death of a nine-month-old ba­by aboard a ves­sel off T&T’s wa­ters last week­end.

The in­fant was with oth­ers in a boat which the Coast Guard said it de­tect­ed had crossed the bor­ders in­to T&T wa­ters.

Speak­ing in the Sen­ate, Hinds said last Sat­ur­day the TTCG ves­sel TTS Scar­bor­ough “was in­deed in­volved in an in­ci­dent out at sea.”

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly com­ing out of this in­ci­dent it was dis­cov­ered that a child was shot and killed. I ex­press very sin­cere con­do­lences to the par­ents of this child and of course, to the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Venezuela as it has since been de­ter­mined that all the oc­cu­pants on that ves­sel that ap­proached T&T with­out au­thor­i­ty or no­tice to the state, were in fact Venezue­lan,” Hinds added.

“From the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to me the TTCG and most cer­tain­ly the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice have em­barked up­on in­ves­ti­ga­tions aris­ing from this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent.”

The Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights said in a state­ment yes­ter­day that, “The re­port by the Coast Guard about the cir­cum­stances that led to this deeply trag­ic event rais­es a num­ber of ques­tions about how the events un­fold­ed.”

“We recog­nise that the T&T Gov­ern­ment is en­ti­tled to ex­er­cise its sov­er­eign­ty to pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and se­cure the na­tion’s bor­ders how­ev­er this must be done in ac­cor­dance with our oblig­a­tions un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law and en­sur­ing the rights of mi­grants and refugees are pro­tect­ed. The pro­tec­tion of mi­grant and refugee rights is not in­com­pat­i­ble with the pro­tec­tion of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

The CCHR re­peat­ed its call for Gov­ern­ment to en­gage with the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for sup­port with tech­ni­cal guid­ance and re­sources to bet­ter re­spond to the needs of mi­grants and refugees and pro­tect the hu­man rights of vul­ner­a­ble per­sons.