Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly is prepar­ing to go to Syr­ia on a fact-find­ing mis­sion.

Ram­bal­ly told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he made the de­ci­sion be­cause over 30 of his con­stituents have rel­a­tives who are de­tained in camps in Syr­ia, Iraq and Turkey, af­ter they left T&T to join the Is­lam­ic State (ISIS) years ago.

“Well, first of all, let me say that I view this whole sce­nario con­cern­ing the chil­dren in Syr­ia, and some of them, their moth­ers, are still there in Syr­ia with them, I view this whole sce­nario as one of an in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights is­sue,” Ram­bal­ly said.

“I view this mat­ter as one where we, as Trinida­di­ans, we have to show that we have this in­her­ent com­pas­sion for our fel­low cit­i­zens. They are, af­ter all, our fel­low cit­i­zens. It is said in our so­ci­ety and in all so­ci­eties that the true test of the moral­i­ty of a so­ci­ety is what the so­ci­ety does for its chil­dren.”

Ac­cord­ing to Hu­man Rights Watch, there are over 105 Tri­ni na­tion­als in north­east Syr­ia and this in­cludes 56 chil­dren.

The is­sue of their repa­tri­a­tion came to the fore again re­cent­ly, af­ter Hu­man Rights Watch pro­duced a re­port which not­ed Tri­ni na­tion­als were liv­ing in squalid and un­healthy con­di­tions in de­ten­tion camps or in jails and urged the Gov­ern­ment to repa­tri­ate those who were in such sit­u­a­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has since giv­en his com­mit­ment to do so and formed a com­mit­tee head­ed by for­mer House speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed to li­aise with the lo­cal rel­a­tives of those in­di­vid­u­als.

Yes­ter­day, Ram­bal­ly said he will now join the ef­fort.

“I have giv­en my com­mit­ment as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, as a hu­man rights at­tor­ney, as a pub­lic law lawyer, that I will en­gage and I have giv­en a com­mit­ment to my con­stituents that I am en­gag­ing from the point of view of, I don’t want to use the word spear­head, but work is al­ready in progress and I will be go­ing to Syr­ia. Most like­ly, if all things go ac­cord­ing to plan, it will be dur­ing the month of June and go­ing to Syr­ia for the pur­pose of en­gag­ing in a cross-bor­der iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise.”

Ram­bal­ly added, “I am of the view that this is a sce­nario where we must rise to the oc­ca­sion, and we must en­gage in a mean­ing­ful man­ner, in some kind of pro­gres­sive man­ner, to en­sure that we can bring these chil­dren home. These chil­dren, at the end of the day, are vic­tims. Ac­cord­ing to law, we deem them to be vic­tims of traf­fick­ing, whether we deem them to be vic­tims of de­ceit, or what­ev­er you may wish to call it as a mat­ter of law. They are, at the end of the day, vic­tims, in­no­cent chil­dren who would have gone across on the will and in­struc­tion and di­rec­tive of their par­ents. Most­ly, in some of these fam­i­lies, it would have been the male fa­thers in the fam­i­ly.”

He al­so called out the Gov­ern­ment and the Nightin­gale Com­mit­tee it set up to deal with the repa­tri­a­tion mat­ter.

“The Gov­ern­ment needs to come for­ward. We keep hear­ing about the 2018 Nightin­gale Com­mit­tee. There are pub­lic doc­u­ments where they in­di­cat­ed in 2020 that they were at a very ad­vanced stage in their work prepa­ra­tion, name­ly that they had al­ready de­vel­oped a pol­i­cy and as­so­ci­at­ed leg­is­la­tion which would then be tak­en to Par­lia­ment, so that Par­lia­ment would now use its col­lec­tive wis­dom to see what is in the best in­ter­est of the na­tion and how we move for­ward,” he said.

“I am say­ing that if that is, in fact, true, we need to fast-track that work and see how we can start im­ple­ment­ing it by way of dis­cus­sion in the pub­lic do­main, whilst all these oth­er ex­er­cis­es take place. Just like Cana­da, where to­day we have seen the repa­tri­a­tion of 19 of its cit­i­zens, I think that there were ac­tu­al­ly court or­ders. There were court pro­ceed­ings and court or­ders which man­dat­ed the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to bring these per­sons back.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Brown for com­ment on the Ch­agua­nas West MP planned trip to Syr­ia but his phone went unan­swered.