RENU­KA SINGH

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne to­day con­firmed that a "small num­ber of per­sons" staged a protest near the T&T Em­bassy in Cara­cas on Tues­day.

The protest ac­tion comes amid re­ports that Venezue­lan na­tion­als were an­gered by the re­cent drown­ings of mi­grants try­ing to make their way to T&T via pirougue.

"There are many com­pet­ing po­lit­i­cal agen­das in that coun­try at this time, and the so­cial me­dia con­tent that mo­bi­lizes some peo­ple has been com­plete­ly skewed and de­signed to in­flame and dis­tort rather than to ac­cu­rate­ly in­form," Browne said in re­sponse to ques­tions this morn­ing.

"We have im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures to en­sure that our staff re­main safe and ac­tive in pro­vid­ing on­go­ing ser­vice to both our na­tion­als and the cit­i­zens of Venezuela who seek and re­quire their ser­vices," he said.

The protest came on the same day that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley took to so­cial me­dia to blast the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), the Op­po­si­tion and lo­cal and Venezue­lan "imps and agents" who sup­port "traf­fick­ers and their car­go" en­ter­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

In that post, Row­ley de­nied that the lo­cal Coast Guard met with the group of mi­grants and turned them away.

The post gar­nered sev­er­al harsh re­spons­es and Row­ley apol­o­gised for mix­ing re­morse over the killing of teenag­er Ashan­ti Ri­ley and the drown­ings of Venezue­lan na­tion­als but stood by the sen­ti­ment be­hind it.

Af­ter delet­ing that post from the of­fi­cial Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter so­cial me­dia page, the PM then post­ed two sep­a­rate posts to his pri­vate page.