Editorial | Reject Trump’s approach

Hopefully, no other Caribbean leader will follow Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s embarrassing and highly spirited cheering-on the United States for its extrajudicial killing last week of 11 alleged drug traffickers in international waters, near Venezuela.

Their boat was simply blown up, either by a drone or missile, believed to have been fired from one of the US Navy destroyers President Donald Trump dispatched to the southern Caribbean in his supposed war on narco-traffickers. Many people, however, fear that America’s real purpose is to set the stage for military intervention in Venezuela to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.

Despite Trinidad and Tobago prime minister’s declaration that “the US military should kill them all violently”, referring drug smugglers, Ms Persad-Bissessar’s Jamaican counterpart, Andrew Holness, should clarify that the US-style action wasn’t what he had in mind in statements earlier this year that criminal gangs and their activities should be treated as terrorism.

For while support of America’s action, in which the accused (who Washington said were members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua) may appear to burnish a leader’s tough-on-crime credentials, it undermines the rule of law, weakens democratic governance and is a threat to anyone everywhere, including, potentially, innocent Jamaicans who may be sailing the high seas. Or the victim could be someone walking or driving along Knutsford Boulevard in the Jamaican capital, targeted with a precision strike because the Americans declared that person to be a narco-trafficker.

MAKE CLEAR

So, the region’s attitude to President Maduro and Venezuela notwithstanding, thoughtful Caribbean governments should, even if Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar continues to demur, make clear their disagreement with how the United States has chosen to prosecute its war on drugs in our backyard, well as warn Washington against a Bay of Tonkin-style incident as justification for a US assault on Venezuela. That would destabilise the Caribbean.

The Gleaner notes Washington’s statement on Friday that two Venezuelan fighter aircraft flew near a US warship in the Caribbean, in what the Pentagon described as a “highly provocative move”. If that is indeed true, we urge Venezuela to desist from such actions.

Washington and Caracas have been at odds since the leftist Army colonel, the late Hugo Chávez, came to power in Venezuela in 1999 and used his country’s oil wealth to help shore-up other leftist governments, as well as small island states in Latin America and the Caribbean. Chávez died in 2013.

The tense relations between the two countries worsened in 2019 when Mr Maduro, Chávez’s successor, was sworn-in for his second term as president after a disputed election.

Things have soured even more since Mr Trump’s return to the US presidency in January. He abandoned all efforts by the Biden administration at rapprochement with Venezuela, doubled, to US$50 million, the bounty on Mr Maduro’s head as a drug trafficker, and declared two Venezuelan gangs, which the Americans say have ties to Mr Maduro’s government, as international terrorist organisations.

Additionally, Mr Trump empowered the US military to take on drug gangs. A fortnight ago he dispatched a flotilla of warships to the Caribbean to enforce the mandate. The September 2 strike on the boat, which the United States said sailed from Venezuela and was transporting narcotics, was the task force’s first kinetic engagement.

LITERAL SENSE

Mr Trump has taken America’s war on drugs to the Caribbean Sea in a very literal sense. Unlike law enforcement and criminal justice processes, lethal force is now the first resort, without any requirement for legal accountability. Indeed, there is no suggestion from the United States of attempts to interdict the boat, arrest the occupants or bring them to trial.

The closest this newspaper can recall of a similar approach to an anti-narcotics campaign was in the Philippines during Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016-2022 presidency. Suspected drug traffickers were summarily executed by the police and pro-Duterte squads.

At least 6,000 were killed during the campaign. However, some analysts, including prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague – where Mr Duterte now faces trial for crimes against humanity – have placed the figure at least double that, and as high as 30,000.

Jamaica and its Caribbean neighbours have serious problems with criminal gangs and narco-traffickers, whose actions fuel violence, stress domestic economies and destabilise societies.

But defeating these gangs has to be accomplished within the rule of law and with adherence to human rights, lest the region surrenders the very principles upon which its vaunted democracy is founded. For, to abandon due process for people you dislike, is to open the door for the same approaches to be applied to law-abiding, decent folks.

Indeed, if America’s current rules of engagement were in place eight years ago, maybe the story of the five Jamaican fishermen who were held by the US Coast Guard in Haitian waters in 2017 might have ended differently, or never told – unless someone gloated.

No drugs were found on their boat, but that was because, the Coast Guard said, the parcels were thrown overboard. The men, according to their complaint, were held for weeks in inhumane conditions aboard Coast Guard vessels, before being bamboozled into pleading guilty to lying to US federal officials. They spent two years in jail.

When the issue came to light in 2019, their quest for justice was being pursued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The US agreed to a settlement of US$97,500.