Renu­ka Singh

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne is sup­port­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in his crit­i­cism of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) over its com­ments over the re­cent Venezue­lan mi­grant tragedy.

Browne stood be­hind Row­ley yes­ter­day, as he said the OAS should en­sure it on­ly com­ments on ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion.

“It is crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant that the OAS re­lies on­ly on ver­i­fied and fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion on all mat­ters, and that the or­gan­i­sa­tion avoids in­ac­cu­rate and spec­u­la­tive out­put and state­ments that can mis­lead mem­ber states,” Browne said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

In a so­cial me­dia post on Tues­day, Row­ley blast­ed the “agents” of the OAS and “its imps” for “ly­ing in the face of the avail­able in­for­ma­tion and ev­i­dence” on the 20 Venezue­lan na­tion­als who drowned in the wa­ters off Guiria over the week­end.

There has been spec­u­la­tion that the group was head­ed to T&T to en­ter the coun­try il­le­gal­ly. There has al­so been un­con­firmed com­men­tary on so­cial me­dia that the group was in­ter­cept­ed by the T&T Coast Guard and forced to re­turn al­though they did not have enough fu­el. But Row­ley, in his post, de­nied the lo­cal Coast Guard in­ter­act­ed with the doomed pirogue.

Yes­ter­day, Browne made it clear he was bat­ting for Row­ley.

“The Prime Min­is­ter is very pas­sion­ate about Trinidad and To­ba­go and he must take um­brage at at­tempts from any quar­ter to dis­par­age the laud­able work that Trinidad and To­ba­go is do­ing in mak­ing tem­po­rary le­gal pro­vi­sion for over 16,000 mi­grants to live and work here, whilst at the same time tak­ing con­sis­tent mea­sures to de­crease the dan­ger­ous prac­tice of hu­man traf­fick­ing from Venezuela,” Browne said.

Row­ley is cur­rent­ly at odds with the OAS po­si­tion on Venezuela. OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Luis Al­ma­gro has made it clear he does not sup­port the cur­rent regime of Nico­las Maduro, while Row­ley and the rest of the Cari­com have adopt­ed a po­si­tion of neu­tral­i­ty on the pol­i­tics of Venezuela.

“We must bear in mind that the OAS has not al­ways had the ap­proach that we are now see­ing and in the past, it has shown more bal­anced and ac­cu­rate out­put,” Browne said.

“The or­gan­i­sa­tion is due for lead­er­ship change in the near fu­ture and we do look for­ward to a shift there in the di­rec­tion of ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sions over ide­ol­o­gy.”

In his post, Row­ley al­so said the Gov­ern­ment does not re­ceive any help from any agency to look af­ter the mi­grants.

But di­rec­tor of the Liv­ing Wa­ters Com­mu­ni­ty Rhon­da Main­got said the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) helps with refugee mat­ters.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Main­got said she was not sure if the Prime Min­is­ter meant gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance, but con­firmed the UN­HCR does pro­vide fund­ing for aid to the Venezue­lan refugees in the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) made avail­able US$1.6 mil­lion to T&T to as­sist with Venezue­lans flee­ing their coun­try back in 2019. Those funds were not dis­trib­uted di­rect­ly to the per­sons in need but made avail­able to as­sist the peo­ple of T&T as they as­sist Venezue­lans who have been forced to seek refuge.

The NGO T&T Venezuela Sol­i­dar­i­ty Net­work (TTV­Sol­net) al­so dis­put­ed Row­ley’s re­marks about not get­ting any as­sis­tance with the mi­grant mat­ter and ques­tioned the mo­ti­va­tion be­hind it.

“Very un­found­ed state­ment and al­so makes you won­der if the com­plic­i­ty with the regime of Nico­las Maduro is re­al­ly on­ly ide­o­log­i­cal,” the group said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

“I be­lieve the PM want­ed to con­fuse the pop­u­la­tion to make them be­lieve that Venezue­lan mi­grants are drain­ing T&T re­sources so that what the Gov­ern­ment has done with the il­le­gal re­turn of mi­grants is well tak­en by the cit­i­zens of this coun­try,” TTV­Sol­net said.

The group al­so said US­AID alone do­nat­ed 1.3 mil­lion “dólares to as­sist Venezue­lan mi­grants last year.”

“The IOM (In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion on Mi­gra­tion) and UN­HCR and UNICEF and many oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al donors are the ones giv­ing the fi­nan­cial sup­port to Venezue­lan mi­grants in the form of ur­gent med­ical as­sis­tance, food, med­ica­tion and the amount of funds in­vest­ed in the last two years in try­ing to sup­port some form of ed­u­ca­tion for over 3,000 mi­grant chil­dren have all been paid by UNICEF and UNCHR,” the group said.

The group al­so has a pri­vate in­ter­na­tion­al spon­sor to as­sist with ed­u­cat­ing Venezue­lan chil­dren while they are in T&T.

“Al­so, look at a pro­gramme that the IDB and US­AID have launched this year for the coun­tries that have re­ceived the most amount of Venezue­lan mi­grants Trinidad is in­clud­ed due to the vul­ner­a­ble con­di­tions they face here,” the group said.