Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Chair of the Catholic Arch­dio­cese’s Min­istry for Mi­grants and Refugees, Leela Ramdeen, said she was brought to tears when she saw the pic­tures and videos of the de­por­ta­tion of 27 Venezue­lan mi­grants last Sun­day.

Ramdeen told Guardian Me­dia she was dis­ap­point­ed in the way the state han­dled the sit­u­a­tion since the group, in­clud­ing moth­ers and chil­dren, had mat­ters be­fore the court to al­low them to stay in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Warn­ing the au­thor­i­ties that the world is look­ing on, she urged that they do bet­ter.

“Who in­ter­cept­ed, de­tained or de­cid­ed to send those 16 chil­dren and 11 women on two pirogues in the night. I un­der­stand the coast­guards es­cort­ed them out. Now, there must be ac­count­abil­i­ty and sys­tems in place,” she ad­vised.

Ramdeen added that while she does not want to get in­to the pol­i­tics of the in­ci­dent, the Gov­ern­ment must be re­mind­ed that this coun­try is a sig­na­to­ry to the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights.

“We have signed on to in­ter­na­tion­al treaties but, as our Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al have said we have not in­cor­po­rat­ed it in­to our lo­cal laws be­cause we are du­al­is­tic,” she said.

She made it clear that the church is not say­ing to the Gov­ern­ment to open the doors to the 28 mil­lion Venezue­lans look­ing to flee the eco­nom­ic hard­ship in their coun­try. How­ev­er, she stat­ed there must be a “hu­man­i­tar­i­an way of deal­ing with them”.

Ac­cord­ing to her, “We need a pol­i­cy that is drawn up with con­sul­ta­tion of all hu­man rights groups. We have a draft pol­i­cy so up­date the pol­i­cy, my God! And, make sure it con­tains claus­es that will pro­tect par­tic­u­lar­ly our chil­dren too.”

Ramdeen said she was al­so sad­dened to see that the in­ci­dent took place mere days af­ter the world cel­e­brat­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Day.

“And, so soon af­ter you put lit­tle chil­dren, a 4-month-old ba­by, not on­ly put them on the sea to the el­e­ments and when we take them out from the shores, we put them back in po­lice cells. The pic­ture of the front page of the Guardian was re­al­ly heart­break­ing”, she lament­ed.

Ramdeen al­so not­ed that we are days away from com­mem­o­rat­ing Hu­man Rights Day, which is on De­cem­ber 10.

She fur­ther em­pha­sized that Trinidad and To­ba­go is a melt­ing pot of cul­tures and peo­ple who have come from across the world to make a bet­ter life for them­selves and their fam­i­lies.