US revokes Gary Aboud’s visa; PM rejects claims of intimidation

Carisa Lee

Re­porter

[email protected]

Sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), Gary Aboud, says his Unit­ed States visa has been re­voked. Aboud told Guardian Me­dia he re­ceived an email from the US Em­bassy on Wednes­day in­form­ing him of the de­ci­sion.

“We are writ­ing to no­ti­fy you that your B1/B2 visa for trav­el to the Unit­ed States has been pru­den­tial­ly re­voked. This email is con­sid­ered of­fi­cial no­ti­fi­ca­tion of that re­vo­ca­tion,” the cor­re­spon­dence in­formed Aboud.

The Em­bassy said it took the ac­tion based on in­for­ma­tion that be­came avail­able af­ter the visa was is­sued, in­di­cat­ing that he may be in­ad­mis­si­ble to the Unit­ed States and there­fore in­el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive a visa.

Aboud ex­plained that he at­tained a US visa at the age of 15, and there had nev­er been any is­sues.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Aboud at­trib­uted the re­vo­ca­tion of his US visa to his de­ci­sion to speak out against the US strikes on sus­pect­ed drug smug­gling ves­sels in the Caribbean Sea, in­clud­ing the sus­pect­ed killings of two Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als.

“If the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty recog­nis­es these killings as un­law­ful, why does our own leader en­dorse them? And if the Unit­ed States pos­sess­es in­tel­li­gence iden­ti­fy­ing these al­leged ‘nar­co-ter­ror­ists,’ then such ev­i­dence should be pre­sent­ed be­fore a Court, not used to jus­ti­fy mis­siles fired in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters,” Aboud said.

Aboud said that to date, no na­tion has sup­port­ed the Unit­ed States in these un­law­ful killings, ex­cept Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who pub­licly de­clared to “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly”, and he could not sup­port that.

FFOS has called for the re­gion to re­main a zone of peace, join­ing a broad­er civ­il so­ci­ety move­ment op­pos­ing a grow­ing US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the re­gion. The or­gan­i­sa­tion was among the or­gan­is­ers of a vig­il and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pub­lic call to ac­tion that ad­vo­cat­ed for peace and sta­bil­i­ty ear­li­er this month.

Aboud said the re­vo­ca­tion of his US visa raised se­ri­ous con­cerns about whether for­eign pow­ers and the Gov­ern­ment were at­tempt­ing to in­tim­i­date or pun­ish civ­il so­ci­ety voic­es that speak out.

“NGOs are be­ing si­lenced,” he said.

But in an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­nied any in­volve­ment in the de­ci­sions tak­en by the Unit­ed States or the US Em­bassy re­gard­ing their visa or im­mi­gra­tion poli­cies.

She said there has nev­er been, and will nev­er be, any at­tempt by her Gov­ern­ment to in­tim­i­date, pun­ish, or sup­press the voic­es of civ­il so­ci­ety.

She de­scribed Aboud’s com­ments as in­flam­ma­to­ry, reck­less, mis­lead­ing, and like­ly to cause un­nec­es­sary fear.

“In fact, when a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter re­cent­ly called a press con­fer­ence at his ‘of­fice’ and made a host of un­found­ed claims, I made it clear that he is free to speak. That is how democ­ra­cy works, and my gov­ern­ment will al­ways up­hold that prin­ci­ple,” she said.