Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has is­sued a di­rect warn­ing to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment: Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­ri­to­ry is off lim­its. And she has al­so made it clear T&T is stand­ing with the Unit­ed States on its poli­cies against the Nicolás Maduro regime.

“To­day, I want to make it very clear to the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and of­fi­cials that they can do what­ev­er they want on Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry, but they can­not come here. T&T ter­ri­to­ry is off lim­its to them,” she de­clared dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain.

She added, “No amount of rhetoric from the Maduro gov­ern­ment will dri­ve any wedge be­tween this UNC-led gov­ern­ment and the US gov­ern­ment. We stand solid­ly with the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment on the is­sues con­cern­ing Venezuela. That will not change.”

Her re­marks fol­lowed claims by Venezuela Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, who al­leged on his pro­gramme Con El Ma­zo Dan­do that a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al, whom he named as “Guis Kendell Jerome,” had been cap­tured while trav­el­ling to Venezuela with a group la­belled “ter­ror­ists” in an at­tempt to desta­bilise that gov­ern­ment.

Ca­bel­lo al­leged that T&T had be­come a “launch­pad” for mer­ce­nar­ies and provo­ca­teurs, and sar­cas­ti­cal­ly warned that the man’s iden­ti­ty might lat­er be “dis­tort­ed” in­to that of a mis­sion­ary or ath­lete.

Speak­ing lat­er at a pub­lic event, Ca­bel­lo added, “There must be jus­tice. We are go­ing af­ter the gangs, wher­ev­er they are… To­geth­er, we will guar­an­tee peace in this coun­try.”

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar flat­ly re­ject­ed the ac­cu­sa­tions.

“We have no ev­i­dence to val­i­date this at this point,” she said, re­fer­ring to the re­ports in Venezue­lan and lo­cal me­dia.

“Again, we have seen no ev­i­dence to sup­port the com­ments from these Venezue­lan of­fi­cials.”

She de­scribed Ca­bel­lo’s threats as po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and warned that her Gov­ern­ment would treat any in­cur­sion as an act of ag­gres­sion.

“If Mr Ca­bel­lo’s com­ments are a re­al threat to en­ter T&T ter­ri­to­ry, they should re­con­sid­er any such in­ten­tion. As a re­spon­si­ble Gov­ern­ment, we have to take all threats against any in­cur­sion in­to our ter­ri­to­ry se­ri­ous­ly.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced plans to con­sult the Min­is­ter of De­fence and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­gard­ing pro­tec­tion mea­sures.

“I will speak to the Min­is­ter of De­fence and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to seek ad­vice on pro­tec­tions for our Coast Guard to use dead­ly force on any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel en­ter­ing T&T wa­ters from Venezuela.”

She made it clear that unau­tho­rised cross­ings would not be tol­er­at­ed.

“Smug­gling mil­i­tary-abled men, able-bod­ied men and women—T&T is off lim­its to them.”

She not­ed that the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment had used sim­i­lar tac­tics in the past.

“They made sim­i­lar pro­pa­gan­da com­ments about Guyana and Colom­bia when­ev­er they had in­te­ri­or po­lit­i­cal prob­lems or elec­tions, and then they en­gage in bor­der skir­mish­es with vi­o­lence. We will take these threats very se­ri­ous­ly.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so had a mes­sage for lo­cals en­gaged in il­le­gal cross-bor­der ac­tiv­i­ty.

“To the drug and hu­man traf­fick­ers, the smug­glers mas­querad­ing as fish­er­men—if you en­ter Venezue­lan wa­ters to do il­le­gal acts and you are caught by Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties, you are on your own. I re­peat, you are on your own. No amount of fam­i­ly cry­ing on Ian’s pro­grammes will cause us to in­ter­vene.”

Sturge: No radar
ev­i­dence, no proof

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and De­fence Wayne Sturge con­firmed that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies had found no ev­i­dence of ac­tiv­i­ty in­volv­ing T&T ves­sels head­ing to Venezuela.

“When we re­ceived the re­ports yes­ter­day, I spoke with the Chief of De­fence Staff, Vice Mar­shal Dar­ryl Daniel, and he as­sured me the radars de­tect­ed no such ac­tiv­i­ty,” Sturge said.

“Be­yond radar, there is no ev­i­dence to sup­port the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment’s claims at this time.”

He said Venezuela had named a Trinida­di­an but had not sup­plied iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or proof.

“We await that, and when the in­for­ma­tion comes, we’ll treat with it in the ap­pro­pri­ate way.”

Sturge said the geopo­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions meant the Gov­ern­ment had to take the mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly.

“It may be a cause as well as a smoke­screen for some­thing else. So, we have to take all threats se­ri­ous­ly,” he said.

He con­firmed there had been no di­rect con­tact with Maduro.

Sturge said For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers had reached out to T&T’s of­fi­cials in Venezuela in an ef­fort to open com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels.

“We are wait­ing for for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Venezuela be­fore be­gin­ning any in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

He made clear T&T had not re­quest­ed mil­i­tary as­sis­tance from the US and did not con­sid­er it nec­es­sary at this stage. He said radar sys­tems were func­tion­al and the Gov­ern­ment was aware of blind spots.

“We did a time­frame for the rel­e­vant pe­ri­od un­der con­sid­er­a­tion,” he added.

To fish­er­men, his mes­sage was blunt, “Fish in your own wa­ters and don’t ven­ture out, be­cause any num­ber can play at this stage.”

Mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy
un­der re­view

On the ques­tion of mi­grants, Sturge said Venezue­lans of mil­i­tary age here are of par­tic­u­lar con­cern.

“Mil­i­tary age, as I un­der­stand it, would be 18. That would be a con­sid­er­a­tion if they run afoul of the law, but they’ll have to be mon­i­tored.”

He con­firmed many of those in the coun­try had un­doc­u­ment­ed back­grounds.

“We have to ramp up the mon­i­tor­ing of those who are al­ready here.”

On de­por­ta­tion, he said: “Once we have in­for­ma­tion that would put us in a place to de­ter­mine whether they should be re­turned, then they will be re­turned.”

He al­so touched on mi­grant ed­u­ca­tion: “Once we know how many school­child­ren are there among them, then we’ll have to make some sort of de­ci­sion as to how we place them in schools to in­te­grate them.”