UK, Canada join US in condemning Minister’s ‘slap and strip’ threats

Apr 25, 2015 News

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…has no place in the 21st century
Minister of Health, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran’s ‘slap and strip’ threats to women’s rights activist, Sherlina Nageer

was nothing short of disgraceful, High Commissioner of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to Guyana, James Gregory Quinn, said yesterday.
As he addressed members of the media at his Bel Air Gardens, Georgetown residence, the UK diplomat was frank in sharing his views on the much discussed exchange between the Health Minister and Nageer.
The UK envoy said that had this been his country, Dr. Ramsaran would no longer be a Government Minister or even a member of the political party. The language employed by the Health Minister is one Quinn believes that has no place in the 21st century.
Dr Ramsaran made headlines when a recording of him calling the women’s rights activist “an idiot”, “a little piece of sh**t”, threatening to “slap her ass…just for the fun of it”, and to have her stripped by “some of my women” surfaced.
Nageer was heard demanding state accountability for the local maternal mortality rate. The incident occurred on Monday last, in front of the Whim Magistrate’s Court in Berbice.
The Minister subsequently claimed that he was provoked into uttering those “harsh words” after Nageer interrupted a press interview.
As the UK envoy focused on the recording that surfaced on Monday last, he said, “To be brutally frank, what the Minister of Health said was disgraceful. The language he used and more importantly the sentiment

that it is acceptable to use violence, in particularly sexual violence against a woman, has got no place whatsoever in the 21st century.”
He went on to state, “If that had been a UK Minister who had said that, he would no longer be a UK Minister and he would no longer be a member of the political party.”
Quinn was also asked whether he was disappointed with the way the government has been handling the issue, but he said it was not his place to comment on that. He noted, however, that former President, Bharrat Jagdeo and Prime Ministerial candidate, Elisabeth Harper as well as others have recorded disappointment in what the Minister said.
Quinn’s remarks come seven weeks into his appointment as High Commissioner in Guyana, but he is not the first diplomat to speak out on the incident.
Speaking to an online news agency, US Charge d’Affaires Bryan Hunt had stated that such statements have no place in a country like Guyana, that has a high rate of domestic violence and sexual and gender-based violence.
Hunt was recorded as saying “In a country that has a domestic violence rate as high as Guyana’s and a sexual assault rate as high as Guyana’s, it is downright irresponsible for any senior politician to make the statement to any woman, in public or in private, that the Minister of Health made the other day. It is completely unacceptable.”

The US Charge d’Affaires reasoned that there is no “possible reason or rationale to threaten sexual violence against anyone, but especially against a woman, given Guyana’s very serious gender-based violence problem”.
He too thought Ramsaran’s remarks were disgraceful.
“I think the damage is much more severe than what the woman’s activist heard or the offence that she took at the remarks. I think it conveys a sense from a senior government official that somehow sexual violence is something that is appropriate to use, appropriate to threaten, and somehow societally acceptable and it’s not. It can’t be,” Hunt told the online agency.
The excuse offered by Ramsaran was deemed unacceptable by the US envoy who made it clear that he does not believe that there is any possible provocation that any woman could have made that would legitimately result in a response in which a senior government official threatens that woman with violence.
“The Minister’s conduct was beyond, it was disgraceful…I think the question that should he be asked to resign is one the party has to struggle with internally and I will let them have their internal debates about that.”
“Should he resign out of his own volition? I’m not going to prescribe to the Minister what he ought to do, but what I will say is, in the United States if one of our candidate officials were to have made that sort of comment, that person would have been expected to resign without question.
Hunt held that the same principle would hold true across any number of countries that a Minister making that type of inappropriate remark for whatever reason, would have chosen voluntarily to step down.
A number of non-governmental organisations and activists have issued a call for the Minister to step down from office.
Meanwhile, mere hours after his apology, Ramsaran launched another tirade against Nageer.
As he addressed a meeting of Regional Health Officers at the Main Street Plaza, Georgetown on Thursday, the Health Minister was recorded labeling Nageer a “miscreant,”  and that she was in need of “psychiatric help.”
Last April, the Health Minister had similarly come in for criticisms after he made unwanted sexual remarks to a journalist of this newspaper.
Ramsaran reportedly told the 22-year old journalist who sought an interview, “I want you to know that I am a bachelor and I can still get an erection.”
Also, a few years back, a PPP member who worked at the Ministry of Education had alleged that she asked him to drop home her 14-year-old daughter but instead he took her to an East Coast Demerara village where he reportedly fondled her private parts.

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