The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) is voic­ing its op­po­si­tion to any form of mil­i­tary con­flict in the re­gion, de­clar­ing that the Caribbean must re­main a “Zone of Peace.”

The union, which had thrown its sup­port be­hind the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment in the lead-up to the elec­tion and, most re­cent­ly, re­it­er­at­ed that po­si­tion, is­sued a strong warn­ing yes­ter­day that war or mil­i­tary es­ca­la­tion would not au­gur well for this coun­try or the wider Caribbean.

The state­ment comes weeks af­ter the Unit­ed States de­ployed sev­er­al mil­i­tary ves­sels to the south­ern Caribbean as part of its cam­paign against nar­co-traf­fick­ing, which it said is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by el­e­ments in Venezuela. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has open­ly sup­port­ed the US’ ac­tions, urg­ing it to “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.”