Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Venezue­lans at the he­li­port de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty in Ch­aguara­mas are al­leg­ing that fe­male de­tainees are be­ing forced to have sex with guards to get more food, mon­ey or to be giv­en spe­cial priv­i­leges. There is no in­de­pen­dent over­sight at the fa­cil­i­ty where fe­males are de­tained and guard­ed by males, they claimed.

Fe­males, ages 21 and 24, who spoke to the Sun­day Guardian, gave an ac­count of the "hu­man rights abus­es" and dif­fi­cult con­di­tions at the de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty.

Apart from hav­ing to give their bod­ies to guards, de­tainees com­plained of the poor qual­i­ty of food and wa­ter, cramped con­di­tions and in­ad­e­quate med­ical con­di­tions.

The He­li­port was cre­at­ed as a buffer zone to deal with the mi­grant cri­sis dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Once a per­son is a non-na­tion­al and deemed to be caught ei­ther on land or at sea in T&T, that in­di­vid­ual is sent there to be quar­an­tined and stays there un­til he or she is de­port­ed.

De­tainees can be left lan­guish­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty as there is no stan­dard time in which im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties de­port Venezue­lans and oth­er for­eign­ers to their home coun­tries as even a High Court or­der can halt the process.

In April, an at­tempt to de­port a Venezue­lan woman who was grant­ed refugee sta­tus by the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) was blocked by the High Court. Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed grant­ed an in­junc­tion block­ing any move to repa­tri­ate Lour­des de Ro­jas.

Ac­cord­ing to the UN­HCR web­site, on No­vem­ber 2, 2000, T&T be­came the 140th coun­try to sign the 1951 Con­ven­tion Re­lat­ing to the Sta­tus of Refugees and its 1967 Pro­to­col–the foun­da­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al refugee law.

The UN­HCR at that time said T&T’s ac­ces­sion to the Con­ven­tion will as­sist the Gov­ern­ment in de­ter­min­ing refugee sta­tus and will help en­sure that refugees in need of pro­tec­tion are treat­ed ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Al­though T&T's Gov­ern­ment has not en­forced this spe­cif­ic Con­ven­tion, it has de­fend­ed its hu­man rights record on the is­sue of Venezue­lan mi­grants.

Last No­vem­ber in its hu­man rights re­port sub­mit­ted to the Unit­ed Na­tions, the T&T Gov­ern­ment said in an at­tempt to ad­dress the in­flux of Venezue­lan mi­grants with­in its bor­ders and to pro­tect the hu­man rights of mi­grants and their fam­i­lies, in May 2019 the Gov­ern­ment grant­ed a 12-month amnesty un­der the Im­mi­gra­tion (Amend­ment) Reg­u­la­tion 2019 and the Im­mi­gra­tion (Amend­ment to the Sec­ond Sched­ule) Or­der 2019 in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 10 of the Im­mi­gra­tion Act, Chap 18:01. Un­der this amnesty, Venezue­lan mi­grants were re­quired to be reg­is­tered and were is­sued a reg­is­tra­tion card by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

One de­tainee who spoke to the Sun­day Guardian anony­mous­ly be­cause of fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, said apart from the girls hav­ing sex with guards in ex­change for mon­ey as well as oth­er favours, the food, wa­ter, and sleep­ing con­di­tions are un­fit for hu­man be­ings.

Cry­ing dur­ing the in­ter­view, the fe­male mi­grant claimed that she has been threat­ened if she ever tells any­one what she has wit­nessed.

"I saw one of the young girls who is in her ear­ly 20s hav­ing sex with a Trinida­di­an man in the show­er. I was told if I ever re­peat what I saw there would be dead­ly con­se­quences. I as­sume sev­er­al of these young women have sex with guards be­cause they need mon­ey or they may get ben­e­fits like ex­tra food. It’s al­so pos­si­ble the guards are just us­ing their pow­er to take ad­van­tage of these poor, vul­ner­a­ble young girls."

An­oth­er de­tainee who has been at the de­ten­tion cen­tre for over one year de­scribed the con­di­tions at the he­li­port as "hor­ri­ble". She spoke in Span­ish to this re­port who was able to trans­late.

"I dam­aged my knee and I al­so have blood pres­sure. I see a doc­tor but there is no in­ter­preter. Some­times there’s a lot of pep­per in the food and I can’t eat it. I’ve told them about it many times. The wa­ter here al­so tastes bad and it makes me sick.

"The mat­tress­es are very hard and hurt my back when I sleep. These days there isn’t even enough soap or toi­let pa­per. There is no in­ter­preter when we speak to med­ical per­son­nel.  

"I am here at the He­li­port but no of­fi­cial ever ex­plained that I will be de­port­ed. I nev­er signed any de­por­ta­tion or­der. The on­ly ones who in­formed me of that are my lawyers. As a hu­man be­ing, I have rights. Yet, they don’t seem to un­der­stand that." 

Criston J Williams, man­ag­ing part­ner of the law firm Criston J Williams and Co At­tor­neys-at-Law, has called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to these al­le­ga­tions of hu­man rights abus­es.

The com­pa­ny has clients who are Venezue­lan refugees and the law firm has been in­volved in de­fend­ing mi­grants who claim refugee sta­tus in T&T.

The com­plaint from many Venezue­lan claim­ing refugee sta­tus is that al­though the UN­HCR has grant­ed them cards as refugees, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T still does not recog­nise it and many are still de­port­ed.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to Williams to give his opin­ion on the claims made by the mi­grants at the He­li­port.

He said there is an im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion cen­tre in a mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ty where de­tainees are re­ferred to as ‘in­mates’.

"That has to be an im­prop­er con­struct of a mi­grant de­tainee and un­der the guise of mil­i­tary se­crets, they are cre­at­ing a sce­nario where there is no over­sight at the he­li­port. There’s no in­de­pen­dent over­sight where fe­males are de­tained and guard­ed by males, this must be un­heard of in any coun­try which re­spects fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights," Williams said.
He said what is need­ed should these al­le­ga­tions be true is an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion at the He­li­port. "No one has been able to as­cer­tain what goes on in­side there. Once there is no over­sight it cre­ates, fa­cil­i­tates and per­pet­u­ates hu­man rights abus­es. Sex­u­al hu­man rights abus­es are most egre­gious at this stage. There are peo­ple who the girls give sex and get good treat­ment, no sex and there’s bad treat­ment.”

The Sun­day Guardian called Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds to get his po­si­tion on the al­le­ga­tions made and if he is aware of how the He­li­port de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty is be­ing man­aged, but up to late yes­ter­day he did not an­swer his phone.

The Sun­day Guardian al­so called and sent a What­sApp mes­sage to the phone of Chief of De­fence Staff Dar­ryl Daniel but he did not re­spond.

Hu­man rights abus­es

Williams al­so spoke to the Sun­day Guardian about hu­man rights abus­es in gen­er­al among the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

Williams gave ex­am­ples of how Venezue­lans’ hu­man rights are be­ing abused in T&T.

"The loss of a right of the in­di­vid­ual to their lib­er­ty and the se­cu­ri­ty of the per­son which tran­scends in­to ar­bi­trary de­ten­tion by the state. The loss of that in­di­vid­ual to be deemed equal be­fore law and equal ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions that T&T has signed up to.

"Al­so, the right of an in­di­vid­ual to have their fam­i­ly life re­spect­ed when par­ents are be­ing de­port­ed. There is al­so the right of a mi­grant to be treat­ed equal­ly by pub­lic au­thor­i­ties. That has been erod­ed.

"The free­dom of move­ment has al­so been to­tal­ly erod­ed. There are mi­grants be­ing de­fined as refugees yet they gave a de­por­ta­tion or­der against them. There are men­tal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abus­es al­so."

Williams spoke about the Im­mi­gra­tion Man­u­al, Vol­ume 1, which serves as a guide for im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers in T&T, which he said is a good doc­u­ment but he is not sure that the Gov­ern­ment is be­ing guid­ed by it.

"The first step is the Im­mi­gra­tion Man­u­al, Vol­ume 1. Have they con­tin­ued or dis­count­ed that? Even the fail­ure to have a pol­i­cy af­fects the per­sons that guard T&T’s bor­ders. That will per­pet­u­ate fur­ther hu­man rights abus­es. I have seen a ship that sank and bod­ies washed up.

"We saw the ba­by that was al­so killed by the Coast Guard. There was a draft 2014 pol­i­cy on T&T Im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies, how­ev­er from 2014 to now it seems to have gone in the wrong di­rec­tion which makes way for al­le­ga­tions of hu­man rights abus­es.

"Where there is no prop­er pol­i­cy it makes room for abuse. Mi­grants are be­ing shot at on boats maybe be­cause the coast guards do not have an op­er­a­tional pol­i­cy that ac­knowl­edges those types of per­sons cross­ing the bor­ders."

Williams al­so gave the opin­ion that the Gov­ern­ment does not have the "tes­tic­u­lar for­ti­tude" to en­sure that im­mi­gra­tion laws ei­ther be fol­lowed or if the laws are not work­ing in the way they should, they should be mod­i­fied.

"What should be amend­ed is a sim­ple in­clu­sion of the word ‘refugee’  in the  Im­mi­gra­tion Act by de­f­i­n­i­tion of what is con­sid­ered a ‘refugee.’ So we move away from hav­ing to re­ly on man­u­als to hav­ing some­thing that is en­trenched in leg­is­la­tion. As in all First World coun­tries, there is an im­mi­gra­tion act which de­fines a refugee."

Since the ba­by was shot and killed in Feb­ru­ary when Coast Guard fired up­on a boat with mi­grants killing the ba­by in its moth­er’s arms, Williams wrote both the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the T&T Coast Guard re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion but so far they have not ob­tained any in­for­ma­tion.

"We wrote to the Coast Guard by the way of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act and they in­di­cat­ed to us that there has not been any in­ves­ti­ga­tion. They have an in­ci­dent re­port of the mat­ter that is not in their cus­tody as they gave it to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)  and that’s all they can say. What type of or­gan­i­sa­tion in the world where there is a Coast Guard or­gan­i­sa­tion and a child is killed and they will not have an in­ter­nal re­view?"

Counter-ter­ror­ism and im­mi­gra­tion ex­pert Dr Michael Jervis who is al­so the UK and North­ern Ire­land rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the in­ter­na­tion­al par­lia­ment for Hu­man rights and al­so spoke to the Sun­day Guardian in the Zoom in­ter­view with Williams said T&T does not seem to have an im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy and it is that which is re­spon­si­ble for the "chaos" that ex­ists.

"Even in the UK, we’ve got a sim­i­lar is­sue. In our case, it has been found want­i­ng, even to the ex­tent in the UK where we are think­ing about putting our refugees in the African coun­try of Rwan­da. This is com­plete­ly crazy.

"In the T&T and Venezue­lan case, we un­der­stand that there are some mi­grants that have got no re­al rea­son to be in T&T.

"Has T&T been ap­ply­ing the pol­i­cy over the last eight years? That doc­u­ment is le­git­i­mate and it has a three-check sys­tem. The au­thor­i­ties have not com­plied with the sys­tem and the ques­tion is why."