Venezuela's gov­ern­ment has urged T&T au­thor­i­ties to car­ry out an "ex­haus­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion" to clar­i­fy the death of a child who mi­grat­ed to this coun­try with his moth­er and who died af­ter pre­sum­ably, the boat in which he was trav­el­ing was shot at by the Coast Guard.

"The Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment ex­tends its most sin­cere con­do­lences to the in­fant's rel­a­tives, while urg­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go au­thor­i­ties to car­ry out an ex­haus­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion to clar­i­fy the facts sur­round­ing this fa­tal in­ci­dent in which, un­for­tu­nate­ly, he lost his life a Venezue­lan child," said the Venezue­lan For­eign Min­istry in a state­ment.

The state­ment al­so in­di­cat­ed that Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro or­dered to ac­ti­vate all diplo­mat­ic mech­a­nisms and es­tab­lish "the nec­es­sary bi­na­tion­al pro­to­cols to con­sol­i­date the cross-bor­der se­cu­ri­ty dy­nam­ics that pre­serve good un­der­stand­ing" be­tween the coun­tries.

The For­eign Min­istry ex­plained that, on Sat­ur­day night, in the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Coast Guard "opened fire" on a boat in which 43 peo­ple were trav­el­ling , "leav­ing the trag­ic bal­ance of a de­ceased child, while his moth­er was wound".

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so ex­pressed his con­do­lences on Mon­day for the death of the mi­nor.

"I want to ex­press my con­do­lences on be­half of all the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­gard­ing the un­for­tu­nate loss of a child dur­ing a se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tion, " Row­ley said in a press re­lease post­ed on his of­fi­cial Face­book page.

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, af­ter speak­ing with the ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent of Venezuela, Del­cy Ro­dríguez, she promised to speed up the process of pre­sent­ing cre­den­tials for the Trinida­di­an am­bas­sador, Ed­mund Dil­lon, so that he can meet as ear­ly as pos­si­ble with high-rank­ing of­fi­cials of the Coast Guard of your coun­try.

Giv­en this, Row­ley said that meet­ing will help to have bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment re­lat­ed to mi­grant smug­gling trips, drug traf­fick­ing and il­le­gal arms traf­fick­ing.

On Sun­day, the Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion de­nounced the death of the mi­nor on so­cial net­works and de­mand­ed jus­tice from the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The death of a Venezue­lan child, who along with his moth­er fled from the dic­ta­tor­ship, hurts our soul as a coun­try. The shots fired by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard have no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, they killed him (…) we ask for jus­tice,” op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guaidó wrote on his Twit­ter ac­count.

Mean­while, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said that from the ear­ly hours of Sun­day morn­ing he had been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Dr Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds on the in­ci­dent.

"I es­tab­lished di­rect and ear­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion, as soon as no­ti­fied, with the Venezue­lan Min­is­ter of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs H.E. Fe­lix Plasen­sia, and with the Am­bas­sador of Venezuela H.E. Car­los Perez, and main­tained same through to­day. Via such com­mu­ni­ca­tion I have been able to con­vey sad­ness and re­gret at the loss of life of a small child in the in­ci­dent, and I have al­so trans­mit­ted a Diplo­mat­ic Note to Cara­cas that pro­vid­ed a sum­ma­ry of the in­ci­dent and that ex­pressed the sin­cere sym­pa­thies of the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go," Browne said.