Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has sum­moned Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Car­los Amador Perez Sil­va, to a meet­ing to dis­cuss re­cent de­vel­op­ments con­cern­ing both coun­tries - and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed yes­ter­day that Row­ley will meet with the Am­bas­sador on Mon­day for the dis­cus­sions. The meet­ing will be a face-to-face event be­tween both men, rather than vir­tu­al.

In re­cent days, Trinidad and To­ba­go has dou­bled down on stat­ing its po­si­tion on Venezue­lan mi­grants, fol­low­ing as­sort­ed mis­in­for­ma­tion on the re­cent in­ci­dent where 28 Venezue­lans drowned in wa­ters near Guiria. Their boat over­turned in Venezue­lan on their jour­ney to T&T.

The group, re­port­ed to be com­pris­ing about 30 peo­ple, was head­ing to T&T for new lives. Bod­ies be­gan sur­fac­ing last week Fri­day and were first not­ed by Venezue­lan Coast Guard.

On Thurs­day, Venezue­lan At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Tarek Williams Saab, via a state­ment, con­firmed the group was head­ing to T&T. He stat­ed that 26 of the vic­tims were so far iden­ti­fied. Saab said each mi­grant paid US$150 to a hu­man-traf­fick­ing ring for their pas­sage.

The boat’s cap­tain, al­leged to have a crim­i­nal record for traf­fick­ing peo­ple and drugs, was ar­rest­ed. Al­so ar­rest­ed was the own­er of the farm who har­boured the group be­fore they left for T&T. The ar­rest of­ten oth­er Venezue­lans was or­dered, as well as for sev­en mem­bers of Venezuela’s armed forces, for ex­tor­tion.

Since the ship­wreck, T&T has been un­der pres­sure, in­clud­ing from in­ter­na­tion­al groups like Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al, Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion mem­bers, op­po­si­tion loy­al­ists in Venezuela and in T&T and from lo­cal­ly-based Venezue­lans. The ma­jor­i­ty of the calls have been for the Gov­ern­ment to ac­com­mo­date the mi­grants com­ing to these shores seek­ing refuge.

Two protests press­ing this cause were mount­ed around T&T’s Cara­cas Em­bassy and a third was staged yes­ter­day by a small group.

Row­ley, who’s led T&T’s de­fence, on Thurs­day made it clear that laws on traf­fick­ing will be tight­ened over up­com­ing months and moves will be made on oth­er con­di­tions to pre­vent ex­ploita­tion of Venezue­lans. He al­so urged Venezue­lans to re­spect T&T’s laws and bor­ders and not to en­cour­age their loved ones to risk their lives by il­le­gal en­try. The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed T&T’s visa sys­tem and an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment will ex­tend to Ju­ly the amnesty for the 16,523 reg­is­tered Venezue­lans in this coun­try. Af­ter re-reg­is­ter­ing, Gov­ern­ment will de­cide on their sta­tus.

Bloomberg al­so yes­ter­day re­port­ed that Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden in­tends push­ing for free, fair Venezue­lan elec­tions, of­fer­ing in re­turn re­lief from US sanc­tions against Venezuela. Biden’s ad­vis­ers are prepar­ing for po­ten­tial ne­go­ti­a­tions with Venezue­lan leader Nico­las Maduro to end the West­ern Hemi­sphere’s worst eco­nom­ic and hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis stem­ming from that coun­try’s is­sues, the re­port said.

On Thurs­day mean­while, Bar­ron.com re­port­ed that the broth­er of drown­ing vic­tim Cristalin­da Goitia had lament­ed the lack of safe­ty con­di­tions and life­jack­ets on the ship­wrecked boat. San­ti­a­go Goitia said Cristalin­da was com­ing to T&T with her 11-year-old son for Christ­mas and hoped to stay.

Venezue­lan AG Saab, on Twit­ter, said Venezuela’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gan be­fore the first body was found when an au­dio record­ing was re­vealed in which it was said that a group of peo­ple had em­barked to T&T. But he said no more news was heard of them ex­cept they’d been “ar­rest­ed and were in a mil­i­tary base.”

Saab said the crim­i­nal cul­prits in­volved in the in­ci­dent tried to de­ceive vic­tims’ rel­a­tives by mak­ing them be­lieve they’d been ar­rest­ed when they ar­rived in T&T. Traf­fick­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions will ex­am­ine mafias’ in­volve­ment with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties. He added that for a long time, the Venezue­lan Pub­lic In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter had been hold­ing meet­ings with the T&T Em­bassy to guar­an­tee that this type of crime is pun­ished in both coun­tries.

Saab said the is­sue (with the drown­ings) was a transna­tion­al crime that needs joint ef­fort from au­thor­i­ties in Venezuela and T&T to tack­le the acts in­side and out­side Venezuela.

“I’m con­fi­dent the co­op­er­a­tion with T&T will de­liv­er re­sults, based on the con­ver­sa­tions we’ve had,” Saab said.

In T&T, over ten peo­ple, in­clud­ing law en­force­ment per­son­nel, have been charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing and there’s been an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of fo­cus on this, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said in Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne re­cent­ly slapped down false al­le­ga­tions by OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al En­voy (Venezue­lan Mi­gra­tion and Refugee Cri­sis) David Smolan­sky that the boat “could have been sent back by T&T.”

In a Face­book post, Brown not­ed Smolan­sky is a Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion politi­cian em­ployed at the OAS and has a “cam­paign of de­lib­er­ate fab­ri­ca­tion against T&T ... work­ing at a mul­ti­lat­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tion doesn’t mean any­one’s some­how en­ti­tled to cre­ate their own facts.”

Venezuela’s es­ti­mat­ed that about 100 peo­ple have dis­ap­peared try­ing to make the cross­ing be­tween Venezuela and T&T over 2018/2019. Saab not­ed 118 cas­es of traf­fick­ing of peo­ple since 2017.