Caribbean & Central America - 17 February 2004

President Bharrat Jagdeo is spearheading a drive to create a constitutional committee designed to protect Guyana's indigenous Amerindian population. Jagdeo met 150 Toshaos, Amerindian leaders, in Georgetown for a four-day meeting earlier this month to discuss a major revision to the Amerindian Act, which he wants to see passed in the National Assembly this year. The original Act was drawn up in 1951.

'We know that Amerindians were historically neglected and to be frank with you, were relegated to second-class status/citizens in their own country. I know that many of their concerns and requests fell on deaf ears. The PPP/Civic Government wanted to make a positive difference, and we felt in order to address these issues we needed a focal point which would be an established channel of communication,' Jagdeo said.

The new Constitutional Indigenous People's Commission will be comprised of 10 members, of which three representatives will be designated by the Toshaos, who represent some 50,000 Amerindians. Their role will be to select three representatives to the commission as well as training for Rural Constables and Justices of the Peace and legalising documents and birth and death certificates.

The most controversial Amerindian issue is to do with land. The governments of Guyana, Suriname and Belize and Dominica have longstanding disputes with their respective indigenous populations about land ownership, environmental destruction, logging and mining. There are approximately 120 Amerindian communities - 76 of which have legal ownership of the lands they occupy. Some of the communities are requesting extensions to their titles. Others that do not already have legal ownership are requesting to have titles to their lands.

Surveying and demarcating the 76 communities listed in the Act began in 1996 has proved problematic, as some 32 communities have been reluctant to accept demarcation. Their efforts to secure what they call their 'ancestral lands' have, as in so many other countries in Latin America (notably the Mapuche in Chile), run up against the interests of big business lying as they do in the midst of the country's richest natural resources.

However, the 200-strong Wai-Wai population, a peripatetic group that ranges over 4,000 sq km in the south of the country (some 2% of Guyana's total land mass) have successfully had the entire area declared a protected zone after successful mediation from the US-based environmental group Conservation International. 'Let me make it very clear that my Government will respect and guarantee the traditional sustainable use of resources by Amerindian communities. We will guarantee, in the Protected Areas, the traditional use of the forest,' Jagdeo said.

Death squad scandal  
Jagdeo is pursuing the Amerindian initiative with vigour not least because it deflects attention from a highly embarrassing development surrounding his home affairs minister Ronald Gajraj, who has come under scrutiny for allegedly hiring a hit squad accused of more than 40 extra-judicial killings in the last year. 

The allegations have attracted unwanted international attention, with both the US and Canada revoking Gajraj's visa and the British High Commissioner to Guyana, Stephen Hiscock, calling for immediate investigations into the claims: 'We believe that the integrity of the government is something that is at question here,' Hiscock said on Guyanese national television.

A report submitted to the National Assembly in December 2003 by the Disciplined Forces Commission made reference to the possible existence of a 'phantom' squad. The allegations linking Gajraj with the squad surfaced in the same month, when businessman Bramma Nandalall said a government minister had put a contract on him because of a personal disagreement. 

Earlier this month, George Bacchus said that he used to be an informant for the group and accused Gajraj of possible involvement. He also claimed that he was the intended victim after his brother was shot down on 5 January by three men he claims were members of the hit squad.  Reports suggested that the squad was set up in the wake of the increase in violent crime in 2002 when about 140 people were murdered -four times the annual average -including more police officers than any other year in Guyana's history. The hit squad allegedly killed criminals, including several men who escaped from Georgetown prison in February 2002.

The swift revocation of Gajraj's visa by the US and Canada after what amounts to as yet no more than allegations has touched Caribbean sensitivities. An editorial in the Jamaica Observer said that it 'smacks of more than arrogance, and a judgement without trial […] Not to mention, of course, the public perception of taking sides in a highly sensitive, and far from resolved, national issue'.