Relatives of two men from Trinidad believed to have been killed in a US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean have accused Donald Trump of “killing poor people” without due process and are demanding justice.
Chad “Charpo” Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, from the fishing village of Las Cuevas in northern Trinidad, are thought to be among six people killed in a US airstrike on a boat allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela.
Trump has described the six killed as “narcoterrorists”, claiming that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics”. But speaking to the Guardian at a wake for the two men, Joseph’s cousin La Toya, 42, said he was denied the basic right to due process and accused the Trinidad and Tobago government of giving up its sovereignty to the US.
“Everybody have a right to due process and due process wasn’t given. It don’t look like we running under our government no more when it comes to the waters – that’s not Trinidad waters,” she said, questioning why US officials decided to destroy the boat rather than detain and question its occupants.
At a wake for the two men late on Thursday, family and community members said they felt betrayed by their own government and at the mercy of a Trump administration that has been given unfettered access to their waters.
“I just want to know why Donald Trump killing poor people just so,” Joseph’s uncle, known only as “Dollars”, said. “Just because he going after the people gas and their oil. He going after people riches and killing poor people children.”
Lynette Burnley, Joseph’s aunt, said the family had received no communication from the Trinidad government since reports of her nephew’s death first emerged.
“That make me feel a kind of way too,” Burnley said. “People coming from international, all over, [calling us but] not right here in Trinidad. They real poor, they let us down.”
On Thursday, Trinidad’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has previously expressed strong support for a US military operation in the region, avoided questions from reporters about the US airstrike that is thought to have killed Joseph and Samaroo.
“Just imagine, the prime minister … They asking she about this. She never even make a statement,” Burnley said, adding that it felt as if Joseph and Samaroo were being treated like “they did not exist”.
Joseph’s grandmother Christine Clement said she was very close to him. He moved from his mother’s home in another fishing village, Matelot, and came to live with her.
She said the only support she had had was from the community.
“Everybody hurt, because in this community everybody is family and friends and everybody close … Our own police service, nobody come and ask a question. There’s no investigation, nothing,” she said, adding she was trying to stay calm and monitor her blood pressure.
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Less is known in the village about Samaroo, who was released from prison in 2021 after serving time for his role in a 2009 murder of a street vendor. Most only knew him by his last name and said he would often try to help out in any way he could with odd jobs and mechanics, but especially animals.
With no body to bury, family and friends are planning a memorial mass. “I talked to the priest and I let him know what went on,” Burnley said. “Next week Wednesday will be the nine days. He coming home here to keep a mass, five o’clock.”
On Thursday, US media reported another strike on a boat in the Caribbean, from which there reportedly are survivors. At least 27 people have been killed in previous attacks off the coast of Venezuela, which the Trump administration says are necessary to protect the United States from narcotics smuggled from Venezuela, but which UN experts and human rights groups have described as extrajudicial killings.
Last month, fishers in Las Cuevas told the Guardian that they were afraid of being caught in the crossfire amid Trump’s “war on drugs” in the region. Instead of their usual route, heading west toward Venezuela, fishers said they now head east, staying close to the coast of Trinidad. On Thursday, villagers told the Guardian that the fishers now don’t want to go out at all.
Activist David Abdulah, speaking for the regional executive committee for the Assembly of Caribbean People, stood outside the US embassy in Port of Spain on Thursday declaring that the Caribbean must remain a “zone of peace”.
Alluding to Washington’s history of interference in Haiti and Latin America, and its invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983, Abdulah warned that there was an imminent threat to the region’s sovereignty and peace.
Launching a regional declaration condemning renewed US militarisation, he said: “The people of the Caribbean must stand firm against any attempt to drag us into war.”
Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch said the attacks violated international human rights law and amounted to extrajudicial executions.
“The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago or with alleged criminal groups involved. Under human rights law standards, officials engaging in law enforcement must seek to minimize injury and preserve human life. They may use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat of death or serious injury.
”In the different recent strikes conducted in the Caribbean, the US authorities made no effort to minimize harm and have not sought to demonstrate that the individuals aboard vessels posed any imminent threat to life,” she said.
