With the world’s fisheries suffering dramatic declines as a result of unregulated over fishing, countries met at the United Nations from 22 to 26 May to determine whether international laws can be tightened to better manage and conserve fish stocks on the high seas. The meeting, the first-ever Review Conference on the 1995 Agreement for the Conservation and Management of Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, brought representatives of governments, environmental organizations and the fishing industry to New York to strengthen implementation of the Agreement and improve the management and preservation of high-seas fisheries.

Between 2003 and 2005, 35 people died after being shot by the police or while in police custody. In March 2006, Constable Dave Burnett became the first and only police officer convicted of murdering a civilian while on duty. The lack of information available regarding investigations into any of the other reported cases shows the lack of the authorities' commitment in bringing those responsible to account.

”A Code of Conduct, which includes what actions or omissions are considered abuses, and which holds individual officers accountable would not only prevent abuses from happening in the future but might have prevented the killing of 35 people in the islands since 2003”, said Kerrie Howard, Amnesty International Americas Programme Deputy Director.

On 13 October 2004, 17-year-old Sherman Monsegue was shot and killed by a police officer. Sherman was in the street with a friend when police arrived and opened fire while the two ran off. Sherman died in hospital. According to the police, Sherman opened fire first. This was denied by a number of witnesses.

A police investigation was opened almost a year after Sherman's death. Police officers called as witnesses have so far failed to appear. According to reports, the police officers are still on active duty in the area. Attorneys representing the family have not been given access to all relevant documentation, including witness statements. The inquest was due to resume yesterday.

In April 2004, 41-year-old Galene Bonadie, was killed by a police officer in Morvant, a village in North-West Trinidad. Galene Bonadie was shot at close range with a rifle after she intervened to stop the police beating a man. The inquest into her death has been subject to delays and has been adjourned since the beginning of 2005.

"Galene's case perfectly illustrates how Trinidad and Tobago's police forces respond to a rise in crime: using lethal force without measuring the terrible consequences it has on dozens of people and their families."

"Coroners inquests must be made mandatory in all investigations of police shootings and deaths in custody. Inquests should also be timely and effective if there is to be any justice for the victim's relatives," said Kerrie Howard.

Recent measures to tackle street crime and improve police performance have done little to improve the situation. The Police Complaints Authority (PCA), a civilian oversight body set up in 1993 to monitor the investigation of complaints by the Police Complaints Division, received 12,919 complaints between 1999 and 2004. Complaints include battery, harassment and criminal damage. Only 20% of cases were investigated.

Amnesty International hopes that the recently passed Police Complaints Authority Act will enhance its ability to conduct independent investigations and that its recommendations will be made binding.

"Policing is frequently a difficult and dangerous task requiring expert training and skills. A human rights approach should be at the heart of any reform process, as it represents the best means of ensuring that police practices recognize the human dignity and the rights of every person in Trinidad and Tobago, while providing them with effective protection from crime."

Background information

In January 2006, Amnesty International wrote to the authorities in Trinidad and Tobago setting out its concerns about allegations of human rights violations involving police officers and requesting information about some of the cases included in the report. No response has been received so far.

For a copy of the report: “Trinidad and Tobago: End police immunity for unlawful killings and deaths in custody”, please see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR490012006

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Bringing in Goebbels

There is some reason to believe, however, that the State Department actually does have a plan, and that these verbal jabs on Washington’s part have a calculated purpose, as they seem to represent a concerted attempt to undermine the legitimacy of Chávez’s constitutional government. This effort already has included backing a failed coup against him in April 2002 - which has resulted in unremitting hostility ever since. It is also worth commenting that Chávez’s own reaction has been only slightly less confrontational. The big difference is that Chavez is being the playful, irascible, confounding and confrontational wunderkind that he always has been.

As for the State Department, with Secretary Condoleezza Rice as its author, its Venezuela policy continues to be bovine, hypocritically cynical and grossly unprofessional in promoting a heavy handed policy against Venezuela, as much based on inventions and gross exaggeration as on facts. This strategy, after it condemns all other peaceful options and decides to turn to a CIA deployment or negotiates an agreement with a contract killer to eliminate Chávez in order to safeguard the U.S.’ oil supply from the regime, would cost Washington dearly.

Taking the high road that should strike a responsive chord with most Latin Americans, the Venezuelan leader observed that the United States “tramples on small and weak nations.” Yet at this point, Chávez neither has threatened nor halted supplies of oil to the United States. Nor did he seem particularly distressed by the sanctions. An official Venezuelan foreign ministry communiqué was issued stating that the U.S. accusation was “despicable” and was “based on a futile campaign to discredit and isolate Venezuela, to destabilize its democratic government and prepare the political conditions for attack.”

One can only hope that somewhere in the Bush administration, a concentration of fast disappearing wisdom remains, and that it can bring to a halt to the State Department’s precarious - if not suicidal - descent into reckless arrogance and sprawling self-indulgence. As of now, the administration’s game plan is primitively simple and grossly offensive. Inspired by Nazi-era propaganda czar, Joseph Goebbels, the model is to keep on relentlessly denouncing Chávez as a “dictator” until the public begins to automatically accept the connections between the word and the man.

Of course, standing in the way of the administration’s success in convincingly making its case is the fact that Chávez’s political movement has won twice the number of highly attended elections than President Bush has, and by consistently far larger majorities-around 60 percent better. Furthermore, the TV networks are overwhelmingly dominated by the Chávez-hating middle-class opposition, and the same is true for the print media. To describe today’s Venezuela as a dictatorship is an unmitigated lie, and despite the adamant pleas of Rice and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, it is subscribed to only by a questionable sector of the U.S. media, led by Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl and the extraordinary science fiction editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Staff

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being “one of the nation’s most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers.” For more information, please see our web page at www.coha.org; or contact our Washington offices by phone (202) 223-4975, fax (202) 223-4979, or email coha@coha.org.

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