Drug trade worsens

By SEAN DOUGLAS
NEWSDAY

Monday, December 10 2012

THE illicit drug trade in the Eastern Caribbean is getting worse, due to the displacement of trafficking from Central America, warned local European Union (EU) charge d’affaires Daniela Tramacere.

She was answering questions at a news briefing held with German Ambassador, Stefan Schluter, on Friday at the EU office at Queen’s Park West, Port-of-Spain. “Crime in the Caribbean — and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) has come up with figures — is on the increase,” said Tramacere.

“The Caribbean, and in particular the Eastern Caribbean, is a transshipment part of the world. Most of the drug trafficking coming from South America — because of the increasing difficulties in going through Central America — is now moving towards this area because this is an area which is extremely porous,” she said. “You have a huge coastline and the Caribbean Sea and it is very difficult to protect, and transshipment is very easy here. We are also very close to the coast of South America.”

Tramacere said the problem is growing, and this is public knowledge. “In this country in particular, when you have illegal trafficking of drugs it goes with the illegal trafficking of human-beings, and of small arms and light weapons. The increase in arms in the country fuels gang-wars and criminality, and this is what we are witnessing.”

Schluter said the Government had expressed the right approach. “You have to reform the prison system. You have to go to the education sector. This is an effort that really has a wide, wide scope, and I think the Government has the right ideas. I haven’t so far seen measures being taken but I think they are on the right track and they have seen what has to be done.”

Schluter said the anti-crime efforts should include opposing the death penalty.

“Ever so often, when there was a particularly bloody weekend here, you have from members of Government as well as members of the society the call, ‘we really have to effect the death penalty’. I don’t think that will help at all. The crux of the matter is actually that the criminals act out of a sense of impunity because the detection rate is very, very low for murders or the real serious crimes. As long as that is not elevated, I think everything else wouldn’t work. The death penalty is no remedy at all.”

Tramacere added that the EU helps remedy crime by supporting training for the Judiciary and for police investigators. Schluter said a Canadian expert based at the UK High Commission for two years has been helping TT to change its laws to eliminate the preliminary inquiry in trials, to speed up courts.

Tramacere said the EU also has a vested interest in helping to stop crime which affects everybody, including the shipment of illegal drugs to Europe. “Also an insecure country is a country which does not attract investment. Economic development cannot flourish.”

Schluter added, “The cost overall of a high crime-rate for a country or a society is immense.”

Newsday asked why no international bodies such as the EU had ever chided TT for never arresting any major drug lords or money-launderers despite the plentiful vagrancy suggesting a thriving illicit drug trade in TT?

Schluter did not necessarily think vagrants were an indication of drug trafficking, saying they also exist in places such as Germany and New York City. “So this is not necessarily the result of a failed policy with regard to fighting drugs.” Yet she agreed that no big fish had been held in TT.

Tramacere said all anti-trafficking policies include a reduction in supply and in demand, plus crime-fighting. She said the Caribbean nations have agreed to international laws to fight money- laundering. “This is the reason we support the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF).”

She said tackling money-laundering helps tackle the drug trade’s big shots. “Those are the ones who gain from the big financial flow which is behind (the drug trade). It’s not the little Toco fisherman.”

She said an anti-drug plan must tackle the three pillars of demand, supply and crime-prevention, all at the same time. “The theory of all this is very clear; the practice is another story. So we are working on the three pillars, and we are also working on the big shots.”

Is there a disconnect between the ideal of Caricom’s fine words against trafficking and the reality of drug blocks run by police officers in TT? Tramacere said civil society must play a role.

Asked how ordinary citizens in civil society could face up to murderous drug dealers? Tramacere said, “Civil society (must be) forcing the Government to take action. You have a plan and then you have a law and the point of the law is to enforce the law...So you have to (hold) your Government accountable for that policy. It’s not just empty words...You hold your Government accountable to deliver what they claim they want to deliver.”