A case of disrespect for the nation?

Jan 20, 2011 Editorial

Guyana is a drug transshipment point but the authorities are not prepared to accept this fact for the simple reason that they would prefer not to have the country linked to drug trafficking because the fall out could be harsh. They are also aware that at the moment flights out of the country are subjected to intense scrutiny as are the passengers whose flight originates in Georgetown, Guyana.
Never the less, visitors from various countries would come here to pick up supplies of cocaine. These are the drug mules—people who for one reason or the other would believe that they need to transport the drug out of Guyana to whatever destination requires it.
Amazingly, there was a time when Guyanese who had migrated would be recruited to be the ‘mules’. Some of them would be entrapped either by loans which they could not repay and the threat of serious injury or death. Others were trapped by the lure of good money, some of which was advanced.
These days the recruits are foreigners and the reason might very well be the ready cash offered. Some were college and university students who needed money; some were people who got hooked on drugs and some were down and out on their luck, particularly in the wake of the recent global economic collapse in 2008.
One woman, Julie Warner, a British national of Kingsley Lane, Benfleet, North West London, was one of those who came to Guyana in 2009, prepared to be a courier. She was a mother of two and white. She had no problem coming into the country because we still have the colonial mentality that causes us to treat foreigners better than we treat our own.
This woman came and was caught smuggling cocaine out of the country. She was duly apprehended, informed of her crime and charged. For five weeks she remained in custody with the British High Commission playing a mere observer role. But back in England, there was a politician who met with Warner’s mother and who vowed that he would get the drug runner out.
This British Member of Parliament identified as Bob Spink must have made numerous calls to officials in Guyana and he must have had a huge lever because Warner was released to go back to England and write a blistering piece about life in Guyana’s women’s prison. She painted a horror story of women being denied basic toilet facilities, of fights and of some inmates not having access to food.
She was able to eat and share some of the facilities she got but she never said how she came by them. Perhaps the British, at the behest of Dr Bob Spink, aided this woman. We would never know how this woman got released. We know that there was no prisoner exchange or threat of visa revocation against the government.
We know that when we called the local authorities they would say nothing as though the business did not concern anyone but Ms Warner and the Guyana Government. We know of no Guyanese drug runner who would have enjoyed such largesse in any foreign country. The law enforcement officers there would not have listened to our local authorities.
What is it that makes foreigners get better treatment than our own? These are the very people who, at the end of the good treatment, castigate us and hold us up to ridicule. It was pleasing to see that this kowtowing to foreigners does not extend to the magistrates. We notice that they sentence the foreign drug runners to stiff sentences. What we do not know is whether these foreigners actually serve the sentences before they are deported.
Laziness of simply lack of drive on the part of our reporters has led to this lack of knowledge about the fate of the foreign drug smugglers.
Suffice it to say that the woman whom Guyana spared and let go back to England is back in trouble and heading to jail. She was caught with heroin this time. It is strange that Dr Spink has not seen it fit to intervene in the very country in which Warner lives. Perhaps he has nothing but eye pass for Guyana.

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