RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the search con­tin­ues for pas­sen­gers feared dead in a boatwreck in Venezuela’s Delta Amacuro, in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights agen­cies have called for safer path­ways for mi­grants flee­ing Venezuela’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties have re­port­ed that six pas­sen­gers aboard a ves­sel, which cap­sized in a strait of the sea known as Bo­ca de Ser­pi­ente (Snake’s Mouth) around 4 am last Thurs­day, have been con­firmed dead.

Sev­en sur­vivors were res­cued and a dozen more re­main miss­ing.

The Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR), the Unit­ed Na­tions Refugee Agency and the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) have all ex­pressed sad­ness over the in­ci­dent.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, Ed­uar­do Stein, Joint Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of UN­HCR and IOM for Venezue­lan Refugees and Mi­grants, said, “The wa­ters of the Caribbean Sea con­tin­ue to claim the lives of Venezue­lans.

“As the con­di­tions in the coun­try con­tin­ue to de­te­ri­o­rate—all wors­ened by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic—peo­ple con­tin­ue to un­der­take life-threat­en­ing jour­neys.”

He added, “Ship­wrecks, trag­ic deaths at bor­der cross­ings and fur­ther suf­fer­ing are avoid­able, but on­ly if im­me­di­ate and con­cert­ed in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion is mo­bilised to find prag­mat­ic so­lu­tions that put sav­ing lives and pro­tect­ing hu­man rights at the fore­front of any re­sponse.”

Stein al­so said, “The es­tab­lish­ment of reg­u­lar and safe path­ways, in­clud­ing through hu­man­i­tar­i­an visas and fam­i­ly re­uni­fi­ca­tion, as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­tec­tion-sen­si­tive en­try sys­tems and ad­e­quate re­cep­tion mech­a­nisms, can pre­vent the use of ir­reg­u­lar routes, smug­gling and traf­fick­ing.”

Both the UN­HCR and IOM re­it­er­at­ed their readi­ness to lend sup­port and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise in ex­plor­ing prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions to help mi­grants.

“UN­HCR and IOM, as co-lead­ers of the In­ter­a­gency Co­or­di­na­tion Plat­form for refugees and mi­grants from Venezuela (R4V), work with at least 24 oth­er part­ners and gov­ern­ments across the Caribbean to meet the needs of refugees and mi­grants in the sub-re­gion,” the state­ment said.

More than 200,000 Venezue­lans have been liv­ing in the Caribbean, hav­ing fled their home­land to es­cape star­va­tion and des­ti­tu­tion, it said. There are over five mil­lion Venezue­lan refugees and mi­grants around the world.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to Venezuela’s me­dia out­let Tane Tanae Delta, the gov­er­nor of Delta Amacuro state Lize­ta Hernán­dez said yes­ter­day that the armed forces were con­tin­u­ing the search for ten of the miss­ing pas­sen­gers. 

The re­port said six peo­ple have been con­firmed dead and sev­en peo­ple have been res­cued.

“We will not hide any­thing and the guilty must pay with the full weight of the law,” Hernán­dez said.

 The boat­load of over 25 mi­grants had been bound for Trinidad but cap­sized in the Bo­ca around 4 am on Thurs­day. A Venezue­lan com­mer­cial ship op­er­at­ing in the Bo­ca, a strip of wa­ter that sep­a­rates Venezuela from Trinidad, res­cued some of the sur­vivors. 

Oth­ers swam for long dis­tances be­fore be­ing picked up by oth­er boats. It is un­cer­tain whether any made it to Trinidad’s shores. How­ev­er, one body washed ashore at Fullar­ton Beach on Sun­day.

On De­cem­ber 6 last year, 29 peo­ple died when a boat sank about 20 km (12 miles) from the coastal town of Guiria in the coun­try’s north­east­ern state of Su­cre. They too had been head­ing to Trinidad in search of a bet­ter life.