December 19, 2020
Trinidad and Tobago police authorities are involved in human trafficking and smuggling in Venezuela and only a few officials have been arrested in the last eight years, while more than two dozen are being investigated for alleged linkage to these criminal activities.
This is reflected in an investigation by migration consultant and specialist in the field of human trafficking, Cleophas Justine Pierre. In her document, reviewed by the blog La Tabla, she indicates that in 2019 alone some 17,136 Venezuelan women were illegally transferred to Trinidad and Tobago.
Police officers in the Caribbean country “buy women to be sex slaves or prostitutes. They offer protection, guidance and logistics on the island,” says La Tabla in a publication on Twitter. In some cases, Trinidad and Tobago serves as a stopover for criminal organizations to take women to the United States and Canada.
With the intensification of the multiform war against Venezuela, which has affected the national economy above all, the population has become more vulnerable to falling into international trafficking networks.
Justine Pierre’s research shows that in the state of Delta Amacuro, in the northeast of the country, the number of people disappeared due to illicit trafficking increased from 1042 in 2011, to 8,568 in 2019. The capital city, Tucupita, is the nucleus of these disappearances: the victims increased from 932 to 7,250 in the same period.
The Table writes that “the study on human trafficking in 2019 included the 15 Caribbean countries that make up the Caricom. The epicenters of trafficking in the region are Venezuela, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and T&T. Between 80,000 and 120,000 people are trafficked annually.
Source: Mision Verdad, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau