RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

& RAPHAEL JOHN-LALL

Trinida­di­an fish­er­men and oth­ers from Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries yes­ter­day boy­cotted a Zoom meet­ing aimed at op­pos­ing the de­ploy­ment of US war­ships in the Caribbean.

The meet­ing was or­gan­ised by Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties and in­vi­ta­tions were sent to fish­er­folk from Ce­dros, Bonasse, Fyz­abad, Ota­heite, Car­li Bay, and Ica­cos.

The meet­ing was host­ed by the Blue AL­BA, which is a project cre­at­ed to de­vel­op the fish­ing and wa­ter re­sources ca­pac­i­ties of the coun­tries that make up the AL­BA bloc of coun­tries aligned with Venezuela.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Ica­cos Unit­ed Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gary Ed­wards said he did not at­tend the meet­ing but would fol­low de­vel­op­ments from the dis­cus­sions through me­dia re­ports. He not­ed that the T&T Fish­eries Di­vi­sion was not in­vit­ed, and this was a source of con­cern for some fish­er­men.

“Peo­ple want­ed to know why the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the Fish­eries Di­vi­sion, which we have been deal­ing with for a long time, did not at­tend the meet­ing,” he said.

A mem­ber of the Fullar­ton Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion said mem­bers were told by lo­cal po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives not to join.

“We know that the Venezue­lans have been at­tack­ing our fish­er­men for a long time. Why do they want to meet us now? Our Gov­ern­ment is al­ready sid­ing with the US,” the mem­ber said.

Oth­er fish­er­men claimed they were un­able to ac­cess Zoom to at­tend the event.

Al­though the meet­ing had 255 mem­bers at one point, on­ly fish­er­folk from Suri­name and Grena­da at­tend­ed.

The Bi­cen­ten­ni­al Con­gress of the Peo­ples, rep­re­sent­ing fish­er­men and fish farm­ers of Venezuela, called for in­ter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty and said Venezue­lan fish­er­folk face threats from US naval ac­tiv­i­ty in the Caribbean Sea.

The group claimed the USS Ja­son Dun­ham at­tacked the Venezue­lan ves­sel Car­men Rosa, en­dan­ger­ing its nine crew mem­bers. The con­gress al­so re­port­ed that two oth­er fish­ing ves­sels were de­stroyed and their crew mem­bers dis­ap­peared.

Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go Al­varo Sanchez Cordero said while no Trinida­di­an fish­er­man at­tend­ed the meet­ing, a fish­er­folk fo­rum will take place in Venezuela on No­vem­ber 21.

Mean­while, Venezuela’s Min­is­ter of Fish­eries and Aqua­cul­ture, Juan Car­los Loyo, con­demned the US mil­i­tary’s at­tack on Venezue­lan fish­er­folk, say­ing these are hard-work­ing Venezue­lans who are sim­ply con­tribut­ing to the econ­o­my.

Last Fri­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump claimed an­oth­er boat with drugs was hit. This came af­ter two pre­vi­ous strikes had killed a to­tal of 14 peo­ple on boats al­leged­ly em­a­nat­ing from Venezuela with drug car­go.

Venezuela’s gov­ern­ment has de­nied the al­le­ga­tions and claimed in­no­cent fish­er­men were killed in the strikes. On Mon­day, Loyo spoke via video con­fer­ence at the vir­tu­al meet­ing host­ed by the Blue AL­BA.

Loyo said the fish­ing sec­tor has a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence in the mar­kets of every re­gion of Venezuela and in fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and was part of the dri­ving force be­hind eco­nom­ic growth and sus­tain­able ac­tions to boost aqua­cul­ture.

He al­so said it has been threat­ened in re­cent years by the pres­ence of US of­fi­cials in the Caribbean, who re­main in the area un­der the false pre­text of com­bat­ing drug traf­fick­ing.

Luis Ro­dríguez, spokesman for the fish­er­men of the Venezue­lan state of Nue­va Es­par­ta, said, “All Venezue­lan fish­er­men, all aqua­cul­ture farm­ers, and the peo­ple are ready and will­ing to de­fend our land; to­day we have all be­come de­fend­ers of our rights.”