Car­los Valero, a mem­ber of Venezuela’s Na­tion­al As­sem­bly yes­ter­day re­port­ed that 112 Venezue­lans have dis­ap­peared in the Caribbean Sea while at­tempt­ing to flee Venezuela in boats that left for Trinidad and To­ba­go or near­by is­lands.

He gave this fig­ure while com­ment­ing on the re­cent de­por­ta­tion of 16 chil­dren from T&T. He de­scribed that sit­u­a­tion as “un­ac­cept­able” and said the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly will take up that case with in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies such as the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), Cari­com and the In­ter-Amer­i­can Court of Hu­man Rights.

Valero said 55 oth­er chil­dren had been de­port­ed from T&T in the same way but the dif­fer­ence this time is that there is in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure in the case.

In the dis­ap­pear­ance of more than 100 Venezue­lans in the Caribbean Sea, he said: “There is a hu­man traf­fick­ing net­work in the area and they may be in their hands.”

Valero, who has ded­i­cat­ed him­self to work­ing for Venezue­lan mi­grants, said while T&T does not have a refugee pol­i­cy “that does not mean that they can vi­o­late hu­man rights.”

An­oth­er mem­ber of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, Karin Salano­va called on the T&T au­thor­i­ties to ex­plain the cir­cum­stances in which they de­port­ed the 29 Venezue­lans last week­end.

“The en­gine of one of the pirogues was not work­ing, the sea con­di­tions were rough and they were not giv­en food,” she said.

“We ask that chil­dren’s rights be re­spect­ed and that they be guar­an­teed the right to be with their par­ents.”

Jhon­ny Romero, spokesman for rel­a­tives of miss­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants, ap­pealed to mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion-con­trolled Na­tion­al As­sem­bly to con­tin­ue work­ing and fight­ing for the more than 100 Venezue­lans who dis­ap­peared at sea.

He said he was not sur­prised by what hap­pened in T&T with the 16 mi­nors be­cause in his opin­ion “it is a gov­ern­ment with­out hu­man­i­ty.”

Source: Guardian T&T