Criminal justice injustice
WAYNE KUBLALSINGH
ON DECEMBER 2, Nazma Muller, Adrian Gookool, Elizabeth Solomon and Denise Pitcher, the executive director of the Caribbean Centre for Human Rights, and myself met with the Director of Public Prosecution, Roger Gaspard, at his Richmond Street office.
Gaspard was bold, forthcoming and enlightening. He agreed to review a list of cases of inmates that we had compiled. Although “the bandwidth of problems in the criminal justice system was too broad” (Gaspard) to cover in a two-hour meeting, the following issues were discussed:
Plea Bargaining Act: One of the purposes of this act was to cure delays. But litigants and their attorneys are not tripping over themselves to get to the DPP’s office to plea-bargain.
MP Charles: Review migrant policy, lock down borders
Rodney Charles -
NAPARIMA MP Rodney Charles has the solution to TT s Venezuelan illegal migrant crisis: effectively and completely lock down the country s borders.
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, he said: “Once our borders are locked down, people will not leave Venezuela, they would not risk it because they know they are going to be stopped. A UNC government would have handled this thing scientifically. It would have been data driven. It would be fact based and tied in to our absorptive capacity.”
He called on Government to seek regional and global support for a well thought out migrant/refugee policy – one that is humane, consensually developed, recognises international treaty obligations, TT’s absorptive capacity and national security concerns.
BLAME MADURO
Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro.
THE United States Embassy, in a post on its Facebook page on Sunday, was clear in who was to be blamed for the Venezuelan migrant crisis – that’s country’s leader Nicolas Maduro.
“The absence of a democratic system in Maduro’s Venezuela, ongoing systematic human rights violations, acute food shortages, precarious health systems, an electricity crisis, generalised violence and economic collapse are some of the key causes that have forced more than five million Venezuelans to flee their country since 2015,” the embassy stated in its post.
However, political activist David Abdulah hit the current US embargo, telling Newsday, “Let (US) Ambassador (Joseph) Mondello tell his government to give back all the money they seized from Venezuela and end US sanctions, and then he can talk about the international economy of Venezuela.”
CARICOM help needed in Trinidad, Venezuela migrant crisis jamaica-gleaner.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jamaica-gleaner.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Clarity, compassion,co-operation on migrants
Sunday 20 December 2020
A group of Venezuelans, including 16 children, who came ashore by boat at a Los Iros beach after they had been turned away by authorities. - Lincoln Holder
There were some signs that the Prime Minister was signalling a more humane approach to Venezuelan migrants at the post-Cabinet briefing on Thursday, even as he emphasised a TT-first policy.
Dr Rowley committed his government to taking a stronger role in the handling of asylum-seekers, which had largely been managed by the UN Commissioner for Refugees and the Living Water Community.
He also promised that mass deportation was not part of the government s strategy. That followed a statement in November when he suggested that the temporary registration of migrants would lead to a more permanent relocation.