PDVSA-East reinstates 400 and re-hires contracting companies
<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News
Posted: Sunday, June 01, 2003
By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue
National Assembly (AN) Social Development Committee president, Angel Rodriguez has accused Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) East director, Luis Marin of allowing 300-400 dismissed managers to return to work and rescinding contracts of 56 employees that undertook contingency plans during the national stoppage at San Tome plant in Monagas.
Last week, a dozen workers initiated a hunger strike outside PDVSA HQ in Caracas and the Energy & Mines (MEM) Ministry to protest current policy ... previously, the group had staged protests at San Tome and other eastern Venezuelan plants.
- Rodriguez claims that coupster sectors have been regrouping inside PDVSA and easing out people, who reactivated the industry during the stoppage.
To prove his claim, Rodriguez produced a video of PDVSA employees in an anti-government protest in December singly out people who had been reinstated ... "workers recognized them and protested forcing the administration to transfer the reinstated to Barinas."
Rodriguez mentions Javier Aranaga, who allegedly was local stoppage spokesman, Juan Bravo, Luis Guilarte, Giovanny Cova and Edson Avila and asks why was Rafael Rios dismissed when he was responsible for guaranteeing the supply of Merey crude to the Puerto La Cruz refinery.
PDVSA-East has also renewed contracts with 9 contracting companies that adhered to the stoppage: Veracer, Rmyca, Veraica, Cafrica, Conigar, Roysso, Halcon, Yelemo and Fili.
Police suspect ship, divers smuggled drugs
By Nicole Fuller, The oston Globe Correspondent, 6/1/2003
SOMERSET - A coal ship from Venezuela that docked five days ago may have been used to smuggle illegal drugs into the country, according to federal and state investigators who yesterday scoured the area for three people spotted swimming near the vessel who fled after a local man called out to them.
The sighting of the three divers - who left behind a flo tation device, a wet suit top, air tanks, and flippers - triggered an early morning manhunt involving investigators from six law enforcement agencies.
US Customs agents yesterday questioned the ship's crew and searched the vessel.
Authorities were unsure if the three were crew members or US residents. As of yesterday afternoon, no drugs had been found, and the suspects were still at large.
According to Police Chief James M. Smith, at about midnight Friday an employee taking a break on the roof of the NRG Electric Generating Plant said he saw three people swimming in Taunton River by the northeast corner of the plant.
After the employee called out to them, police say, the divers responded in a language he did not recognize.
They then swam to the shore, leaving their scuba equipment on a rocky stretch of land, police said.
The employee, whom Smith declined to name, immediately called Somerset police.
A Bristol County Sheriff Department's K-9 unit was dispatched to the scene to assist Somerset police, as were investigators from the State Police Dive Team, the FBI, the US Navy's Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team, and US Customs.
A police scuba team searched the waters, and police dogs tracked a scent from the riverbank on to a grassy lot, then lost the trail at an abandoned house.
Investigators have ruled out terrorism, saying there was no indication of explosives.
They suspect that the divers were attempting to retrieve a drug canister attached to the hull of the ship.
Smith said sealed canisters attached to ships by rope ''is a known method of smuggling drugs.''
Investigators said they found no canisters, and believe the three divers may have escaped with one or more.
''We feel that was probably going on there,'' Smith said.
The ship is registered in Poland but arrived in Somerset from Venezuela with a shipment of coal.
This story ran on page B4 of the Boston Globe on 6/1/2003.
Refugees still held captive by red tape --Amnesty fight lasts a decade
By RICHARD T. PIENCIAK
NY DAILY NEWS
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
Michael Chen, one of the refugees aboard Golden Venture in 1993, ouside his Columbus, Ohio restaurant with his son and wife Xiu Lan Lin. Michael Chen vividly remembers the Golden Venture heading for the Golden Mountain as if it were yesterday. He will never forget the rats, the rations and his thirst for freedom.
In the early morning hours of Sunday, June 6, 1993, the Golden Venture, a dilapidated freighter holding 282 illegal Chinese immigrants as its cargo, struck a sandbar offshore from Fort Tilden on the Rockaway peninsula.
Ten of the passengers drowned or died of hypothermia while trying to swim ashore in 53-degree water and high waves.
Although Chen, who was only 20 at the time, survived the torturous 16,000-mile journey, he has been foundering in a sea of immigration red tape ever since.
“We've tried to get permanent residence here. And in 10 years I've never given up hope. America is the freedom country," Chen said."But I'm scared. We shouldn't have to be hiding. I'm afraid of being picked up by immigration. Who knows? It could happen to me tomorrow."
Of those who made it to shore, about 45 were granted political asylum, about 140 returned to China — voluntarily or via deportation proceedings — and about 50 were sent to other countries, said Beverly Church, a paralegal in Gettysburg, Pa., who has worked on the Golden Venture case.
That leaves Chen and 37 other men who are trapped in an immigration black hole. They have been allowed to live, and work, in the United States pending a decision on amnesty that has never come.
Over the years, Chen has become quite Americanized.
He changed his name from Chen Sherm Dee, to fit in better. He married Xiu Lin, 22, on Sept. 1, 2002, in New York City, with several of his Golden Venture comrades in attendance.
He and his wife have a 3-month-old son, Allen. He owns and operates a restaurant outside Columbus, Ohio, called the Cafe China.
"We've been very good citizens. We pay taxes. We work six days a week and 12 hours a day," he said.
But he and his buddies — who live quietly in about eight states, including New York and New Jersey — are not free.
"I think it is most unfortunate that it's 10 years later and these men are still in limbo," said the Rev. Joan Maruskin, who heads the Church World Service's immigration and refugee program in Washington."Unfortunately, these men happened to be the ones caught up in a system that is painfully slow and very unjust."
A bill introduced by Rep. Todd Platts (R-Pa.) would give amnesty to the 38 — and immediate permanent residency. But a similar bill in the last Congress died without action.
"This is our last chance," Chen said of the Platts proposal."We hope we can get the amnesty bill so we can stay here legally. I want permanent residency. I don't want to be illegal. I don't want to be hiding. It's scary every day."
National attention
It was shortly before 2 a.m., a decade ago this Friday, when the plight of the Golden Venture first came to the attention of New York law enforcement. Quickly, the world would learn of the horrors, which crystallized national attention on the illegal migration of Chinese to the West.
Those aboard had prepaid about $5,000 each and promised an additional $30,000 in stateside labor to a syndicate of snakeheads, the term given to smugglers of human contraband.
During their three-month trek, the passengers were crammed into two tiny storage holds, each 25 feet by 40 feet, forced to share a single bathroom, fed a meager offering of rice with vegetables or stale peanuts — just once a day — and small rations of water. They shared their living space with lice, rats and roaches.
The journey for freedom began in January 1993, when a freighter bearing a Panamanian registration and the name Tong Sern left Bangkok - its hold empty.
Several weeks later, with the vessel out in the South China Sea, about 100 Chinese boarded, transported to the ship by speedboats.
From there, now sailing under the Honduran flag and the name Golden Venture, the rusting ship headed for Singapore.
As the ship departed, the immigrants shouted"America, America." They were bound for a new life in the U.S., a land that Chinese illegals have long called the Golden Mountain.
From Singapore, the ship headed to Mombasa, Kenya, where the rest of the illegal passengers were picked up. The second group had been aboard another ship, the Saudi-owned Najd II, that had been seized by authorities.
But the snakeheads arranged for a local fishing vessel to secretly ferry the Chinese out to the Golden Venture, which was waiting offshore.
Chen was among those who boarded in Kenya but said his trip actually began in 1991, two years earlier, when his parents shipped him off to Burma, then Thailand, and finally Kenya.
"Out on the ocean, I was so scared because we ran into a couple of big storms," Chen said." I was a little bit seasick, too."
In mid-May 1993, as the Golden Venture approached the Eastern Seaboard, the captain searched in vain for several small boats that were supposed to rendezvous for transfer of the passengers for the final leg.
When a fleet of small boats failed to appear at a second rendezvous point, the representative of the Chinese crime boss who ran the operation tied up the captain and ordered the Golden Venture steered toward Rockaway.
An ugly trip turned uglier when the Golden Venture hit a sand bar.
"I said, ‘We finally landed.' My first thought was 'America is the freedom country,'" Chen said."But it was a horrible night. It was so cold. And also, we were so weak because we'd been on the boat for so long."
As authorities sought to cordon off the Queens beachfront about two-thirds of the passengers jumped off and tried to swim ashore. The remaining 100 stayed on the 175-foot ship to await the arrival of rescue personnel.
Chen says he didn't jump into the water because he cannot swim."I waited on the boat until the rescuers came. I was lucky. Many people tried to run away. They jumped in the water. When the waves came, they couldn't stand up. A lot of people called, 'Help, help.' It was so horrible."
Most of those who reached the beach, near Jacob Riis Park, were too tired to move and were picked up by police. About 30 passengers, however, fled into the neighborhood.
Soon, the beach was filled with ambulances. One official would later characterize the mission as the city's largest rescue effort, other than the World Trade Center bombing earlier that year.
Several dozen of the passengers were taken to local hospitals to be treated for hypothermia and exposure; the dead were taken to the city morgue. The survivors were taken to holding cells.
The immigration system in the city could not possibly hold that many detainees, so more than 200 of them were transported to local jails in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.
Most were sent to the York County Jail in central Pennsylvania. While there, many passed the time by transforming a paper-folding pastime into an art form, creating increasingly elaborate paper sculptures as gifts for their supporters. The best of the works were later displayed at museums across the nation.
A local group in York affiliated with the United Methodist Church was formed, and, calling itself the People of the Golden Vision, took up the fight for the detainees' freedom.
Claims rejected
Many in custody petitioned for political asylum. Some cited China's coercive family-planning laws — the one-child-one-family rule and forced sterilization policies. Others claimed religious persecution. Most of the claims were ultimately rejected.
Little by little, the prisoners were returned to China or sent to neutral nations, including Equador, Venezuela and Canada.
After four years, Chen and the others in the final group were released from York County Jail in February 1997 by special order of then-President Bill Clinton, pending determination of their immigration status.
But the bureaucracy sucked them in, said Church and Maruskin.
And then came the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
"I think that hurts us a little bit," said Chen. "Before Sept. 11, people could get work cards easier. Since then, everything has been much harder."
Officially, before the Platts legislation can be moved, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, must conduct extensive background checks to make sure the men have not committed any criminal acts since being released.
Calls to the Homeland Security Department about those checks were referred to the new immigration agency. Repeated calls to that agency's headquarters in Washington were not returned.
"I know in my heart that we're going to win this. It's just a matter of persevering in getting it through," Church said."They've gone through hell and back. They don't deserve it."
She said the men should be allowed to stay here"because after 10 years of working hard, of showing us why they want to be here — not unlike my own grandfather when he came from Ireland — I think they've shown they have a reason to be here.
"They have left their families, they have left everything they ever knew — and still love — and they still prefer to be here to try and make a living and fend for their families and live free."
Originally published on June 1, 2003