T&T trade union lead­ers yes­ter­day joined forces in sup­port of moves by Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro for in­struct­ing the mil­i­tary to stop hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid from en­ter­ing Venezuela. How­ev­er, de­spite the fact that the move may prompt in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion at some stage if the tur­moil it is caus­ing con­tin­ues, the union say they still hope for a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion there.

The Venezue­lan mil­i­tary’s ac­tion led to Maduro’s op­po­nent, op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do, send­ing in his own sup­port­ers to res­cue box­es of emer­gency food and med­i­cine, which trig­gered vi­o­lent clash­es over the week­end on the Colom­bian bor­der with se­cu­ri­ty forces block­ing the en­try of the US-sup­plied hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid. At least five con­firmed deaths and more than 300 in­juries have been re­port­ed in the clash­es.

Guai­do has promised to es­ca­late his ap­peal to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, be­gin­ning with a meet­ing yes­ter­day in Colom­bia’s cap­i­tal, Bo­go­ta, with Unit­ed States Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence and Colom­bia Pres­i­dent Ivan Duque Mar­quez, on the side­lines of an emer­gency sum­mit of lead­ers of the so-called Li­ma Group to dis­cuss Venezuela’s cri­sis.

Yes­ter­day, the T&T Friends of Cu­ba, the Bo­li­vian and Venezue­lan sol­i­dar­i­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions, Waori Com­mu­ni­ty and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the trade union move­ment, among them the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union, Postal Work­ers’ Union, Bank­ing In­dus­tri­al Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union (BIG­WU), Oil­fields Work­ers’ Union (OW­TU) and the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), held a mass sol­i­dar­i­ty ac­tion out­side the Venezuela Em­bassy at Vic­to­ria Av­enue, Port-of-Spain.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia un­der the watch­ful eyes of armed po­lice were BIG­WU pres­i­dent Vin­cent Cabr­era, MSJ leader David Ab­du­lah and Roger Tou­s­saint, who was a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Trans­port Union in New York. OW­TU leader An­cel Ro­get, who ar­rived late, joined the vo­cif­er­ous group.

Fol­low­ing their ad­dress, the lead­ers walked to the Unit­ed States Em­bassy at Mar­li Street where they nois­i­ly chant­ed “Vi­va Maduro,” “Hands off Venezuela” and “End the sanc­tions now.”

Cabr­era said if a war should break out in Venezuela and a bomb falls “in the Gulf it could cause a tsuna­mi in Trinidad.”

“We have to take this thing very se­ri­ous­ly. We could ex­pect a war to break out any­time in Venezuela,” Cabr­era said.

He said by Guai­do at­tend­ing the sum­mit he was send­ing a mes­sage to peo­ple to sup­port an Amer­i­can in­va­sion.

“If we are not care­ful and sit twid­dling our fin­gers we would sim­ply wake up one morn­ing and hear the war is here.”

Cabr­era said to hear that five for­mer prime min­is­ters of Cari­com have in­di­cat­ed that mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion was the worst thing showed that they were about peace. He took is­sue with Guai­do de­clar­ing him­self as in­ter­im pres­i­dent of Venezuela.

Not­ing that the US was back­ing Guai­do, whose par­ty was lean­ing to­wards vi­o­lence, Cabr­era said, “It’s not like Maduro doesn’t have sup­port. They are not go­ing to let Amer­i­can troops come in and put Guai­do (in pow­er). It’s go­ing to be war. It’s go­ing to be like Viet­nam.”

Stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Maduro, Ab­du­lah added, “We are op­posed to any kind of ex­ter­nal in­ter­ven­tion in the af­fairs of Venezuela.”

Ab­du­lah said the unions and oth­er stake­hold­ers will not sup­port mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion as well, since this was a vi­o­la­tion of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Amer­i­can States and Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter, which could lead to loss of lives and the cre­ation of a refugee cri­sis.

If things turn ug­ly in the neigh­bour­ing coun­try, Ab­du­lah said refugees would flee to T&T where they would have the same rights and priv­i­leges to ba­sic ser­vices as na­tion­als in any coun­try, which T&T would not be able to deal with. He said the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis was be­ing used as a pre­text for in­va­sion.

Tou­s­saint said the hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid should have been de­liv­ered by the UN, who would have dis­trib­uted it to those who are des­ti­tute and hun­gry.

“Which coun­try al­lows any­one to vi­o­lates its bor­ders? This is clear­ly a provo­ca­tion and it would not sur­prise me that many of the el­e­ments seen on tele­vi­sion down at the Colom­bian bor­der are paid by the US,” Tou­s­saint said, de­scrib­ing the hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid as a fraud.

“This (aid) is com­ing from the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment that has jailed thou­sands of Lati­no chil­dren. Some have died. This is the hu­man­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment (USA) that is com­ing to the aid of the Venezue­lan peo­ple to say noth­ing about the crimes they have com­mit­ted against black and brown peo­ple.”