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The T&T In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTI­TOA) has re­ject­ed what it de­scribes as an un­bal­anced por­tray­al of the coun­try in a re­cent ar­ti­cle pub­lished by The Tele­graph in the Unit­ed King­dom.

The ar­ti­cle, ti­tled “From tourism to ter­ror: The Caribbean is­land torn apart by gangs and guns,” claims T&T is over­whelmed by gang vi­o­lence, cit­ing a surge in asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions to the UK and the coun­try’s prox­im­i­ty to Venezuela as con­tribut­ing fac­tors in the trans­ship­ment of co­caine to Eu­rope.

“Cit­i­zens are clam­our­ing for gun laws to be eased so they can de­fend them­selves. The gangs, mean­while, have all the weapon­ry they need, much of it linked to the grow­ing pres­ence of co­caine car­tels from near­by Latin Amer­i­ca. Trinidad lies just sev­en miles off Venezuela and, with its his­toric links to Britain, is a po­ten­tial tran­sit point for Eu­rope-bound co­caine,” the ar­ti­cle states.