Hu­man rights in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean are ex­press­ing con­cern over the re­cent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the Coast Guard and a mi­grant boat from Venezuela, which led to the death of a ba­by and the in­jury of his moth­er.

The Caribbean Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights (CCHR) has called on Gov­ern­ment to con­duct a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this lat­est tragedy.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, the CCHR al­so ques­tioned why the Coast Guard chose to fire on the ves­sel it­self.

“CCHR re­ceived re­ports that the ves­sel that was car­ry­ing the mi­grants had around twen­ty per­sons, in­clud­ing sev­er­al women and sev­en chil­dren and so the de­ci­sion by the Coast Guard to fire at a ves­sel full of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple must be close­ly scru­ti­nised. Use of force must al­ways be the last re­sort and pro­por­tion­ate to the threat posed.”

And the Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice (CC­SJ) and the Arch­dio­cese’s Min­istry for Mi­grants and Refugees (AMMR) re­leased its own state­ment on the mat­ter, say­ing:

“We are com­fort­ed with the knowl­edge that there will be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this trag­ic oc­cur­rence and look for­ward to the out­come.”

The CC­SJ/AMMR re­lease asked the na­tion to adopt a hu­mane ap­proach to­wards mi­grants and the chal­leng­ing mi­gra­tion is­sue.

“We call up­on the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and in par­tic­u­lar, our Catholic com­mu­ni­ty to wel­come, pro­tect, pro­mote and in­te­grate the mi­grant and refugee pop­u­la­tions that have come to our shores. While we recog­nise that there is a lim­it to how many mi­grants and refugees we can re­al­is­ti­cal­ly ac­com­mo­date, we call up­on the State to do as Pope Fran­cis has rec­om­mend­ed, and say how many mi­grants they can take,” the state­ment read.

The CC­SJ/AMMR state­ment al­so de­scribed traf­fick­ing in per­sons as “a crime against hu­man­i­ty”.

"We take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­demn traf­fick­ing in per­sons which Pope Fran­cis says is 'an open wound on the body of con­tem­po­rary so­ci­ety, a scourge up­on the body of Christ. It is a crime against hu­man­i­ty',” stat­ed Chair, Leela Ramdeen.

The CCHR in its re­lease sug­gest­ed that the time has come for prop­er poli­cies to put in place to en­sure a bet­ter han­dling of the mi­grants’ sit­u­a­tion.

“The pro­tec­tion of mi­grant and refugee rights is not in­com­pat­i­ble with the pro­tec­tion of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty… This lat­est event once again un­der­scores the gaps in our poli­cies and leg­is­la­tion with re­spect to the pro­tec­tion of mi­grants and refugees and the fail­ure by the state to adapt to the cur­rent mi­gra­tion con­text and ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Venezuela. Mi­grants and refugees are be­ing forced to en­ter ir­reg­u­lar­ly be­cause no safe and le­gal path­ways ex­ist for them to seek pro­tec­tion. The mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the bor­ders is not the so­lu­tion and places vul­ner­a­ble per­sons at fur­ther risk.”

The CCHR al­so urged 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 to pro­tect the hu­man rights of vul­ner­a­ble per­sons.”