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MISSING PERSONS
Except for a few, most Guyanese are not aware that May 25 is known as International Day of Missing Persons (IDMP). On this day, many countries come together to remember the thousands of persons who are missing around the world. It is the same day as the United States’ National Missing Children’s Day designated by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.
Launched in 1998, IDMP is a global network of countries that disseminate information and images of missing persons. IDMP is a day when several nations highlight, honor and pay their respects to the missing persons around the world.
On this day, missing persons around the world are commemorated. Although there is no accurate data on the number of persons missing, it is estimated that more than half million persons are currently missing around the world.
A missing person is an individual who has disappeared and whose status of being alive or dead cannot be confirmed. Laws related to missing persons are often complex since, in many countries, relatives cannot have access to a person’s assets until death is proven by law or by a death certificate. The uncertainties and lack of closure or a funeral that resulted from a missing person can be extremely painful with lasting effects on family and friends.
Persons may be missing for several different reasons. There could be an accident, crime, death in a location where the body cannot be found, such as at sea or in a forest, or voluntary disappearance.
However, the most common reasons are kidnapping, abduction or joining a cult or other religious groups that require no contact to the outside world. Not to mention mental illness, sold into slavery, serfdom or sexual servitude, or natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis.
Guyana is not a member of the International Missing Persons Network, but as reported in the media a few weeks ago, there are twelve persons currently missing in the country. People go missing all the time in Guyana. Some would re-appear alive and well a few days later, but others do not which suggests that they were kidnapped, murdered and buried in secret graves.
Such was the case of Babita Sarjou, whose skeletal remains were found in a shallow grave in the backyard of her reputed husband’s house six years after she disappeared in 2010.
In Guyana, people from the same neighborhood know each other very well, yet after 18 years, no one knows what happened to 18-year-old June Ann Davis who disappeared in July 1999, and 11-year-old Nordex Wilkinson, who vanished from her father’s Turkeyen home in May 2004. It was reported that Nordex’s was allegedly killed by her father. After 13 years, her whereabouts and that of her father remains a mystery.
Today, there are still several missing persons in Guyana, including 58 year old Michael Harris, Basmattie Anantram, 25-year old LeVoyTaljit, 76-year-old deaf and mute Banalo Motilall, Nyozi Goodman, Shawnette Savory, Ronson Williams and Carlos Anderson who have been missing since 2004.
However, the most baffling case of missing persons in the country is the mysterious disappearance of US-based Guyanese, Kwame Rumel Jobronewet on June 2009. According to police, the Jobronewet disappearance is strange.
Mr. Jobronewet had travelled to Guyana to attend his mother’s funeral, but disappeared before she was buried. The 67-year-old left his relative’s home in Buxton but has not been seen since.
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