Sheer disrespect for Amerindians – APNU+AFC must apologise

Oct 11, 2019 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

Amerindian Toshaos are in Georgetown for the National Amerindian Toshaos Council (NTC) 2019. As is practice, the government provides boarding and lodging for the Amerindian leaders during the meeting. Complaints have emerged that the Amerindian leaders are housed in a city hotel, considered by most people as a “short-time” hotel. Some of the leaders, including many female leaders, have complained that they have been housed in sub-standard conditions, with beds and mattresses that are filthy and small, rooms often with no running water or running water that is smelly, brown and dirty. While they are housed in sub-standard conditions, the illegal government Ministers are living in luxury, traveling around the world, staying at posh hotels. Those not traveling are musing themselves at the Marriott and other posh places, at taxpayers expenses. It is truly disrespectful and disgraceful.
Before 2015 Cheddi Jagan, Sam Hinds, Janet Jagan, Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar, former Presidents, attended every one of the NTC meetings. David Granger disrespectfully has not attended all of the NTCs between 2015 and 2018. But he made sure he attended NTC 2019, even as an illegal President, because elections are coming up and he wants the Amerindian votes. From Day 1 of NTC 2019, Granger and his colleagues have treated the Amerindian leaders with total disrespect and sheer callousness. Granger had invited the leaders to a reception at State House for Friday, but having learnt that Bharrat Jagdeo had invited them to a reception at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition on Monday evening, Granger brought forward his reception to the same Monday, clashing with the Jagdeo reception. The generous Amerindian leaders attended both receptions. Many went first to Granger’s reception, expecting dinner. Instead, other than some snacks, there was no dinner. Thankfully, the Amerindian leaders had a sumptuous dinner at the Jagdeo reception.
The change in timing for the Granger reception was disrespectful to the Amerindian leaders, but the disrespect was amplified when the government team refused to provide transportation for the Amerindians to go to their hotel first to freshen up before they went to the Granger reception. This shows callousness, not just disrespect. But the disrespect with which the Amerindians have been treated this week is even more egregious because it happened while fellow Amerindian leaders like Sydney Allicock, Dawn Hastings-Williams, George Norton and Garrido-Lowe were complicit in the betrayal.
Yet APNU+AFC’s disrespect for Amerindian leaders is just a continuation of the disrespect for Amerindians over a long time. We cannot forget Sydney Allicock’s insult to Amerindians during the opening of Amerindian Heritage Month 2019 when he chastised Amerindians for being unreasonable and greedy for simply asking for their land titles, part of their fundamental rights. The same Allicock has sided with persons like Eric Philips and Keith Scott who have consistently sought to derail Amerindian Land Rights. Allicock has been stone-silent as APNU+AFC stalled or even completely abandoned the demarcation and titling of Amerindian lands. Joe Harmon was reportedly disingenuous when he promised on February 22, 2019, in Sand Creek, Region 9, that Amerindian land demarcation and titling would restart in March 2019, but Allicock made no mention of this.
This same Allicock who is now begging for votes insulted, disowned and betrayed Amerindians in October 2017, during a meeting of the NTC, when he shamelessly rebuked the Toshaos for objecting to Granger’s appointment of a Land Commission of Inquiry to, among other things, study the demand of certain Afro-Guyanese organisations for rights to ancestral land. Incidentally, this is the same Allicock who in June 2017, defended Keith Scott who had called Amerindians greedy and avaricious for demanding “so much land” and who had disavowed the founding principles of indigenous affairs, now regarded as a right – Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).

In fact, the betrayal of Amerindians started soon after May 2015. Allicock, together with other senior PNC operatives in the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, such as Mervyn Williams and Martin Cheong, disbanded the then very successful Amerindian Land Titling (ALT) Unit. The AMT Unit was fired because from the very inception Allicock and his PNC Amerindian colleagues at the Ministry were tools for APNU+AFC to stop the demarcation and titling of Amerindian lands. In fact, funds for demarcation and land titling, acquired and allocated by the PPP ($US10.7M from the REDD+GRIF Project), were then squandered, for other non-related activities.

Not only has APNU+AFC, through Allicock’s Ministry, instituted a de facto cease order on titling of Amerindian lands, there has also been a corresponding intrusion into Amerindian communities, reducing lands available to Amerindians and abrogating their fundamental rights. In converting Lethem, Mabaruma and Bartica into townships and in creation of NDCs in Amerindian communities, without FPIC, boundaries have been extended encroaching on Amerindian lands. This diminution of Amerindian lands and change of governance collide with the Amerindian Act 2006. Allicock has been the instrument for this hatchet job on Amerindian Rights, guaranteed in Guyana’s constitution and in the Amerindian Act 2006. Furthermore, Allicock, Dawn Hastings, George Norton, Garrido-Lowe and Mervyn Williams have stood silently as APNU+AFC utilised other laws, such as the forestry and mining legislations, to breach the Amerindian Act 2006, robbing them of sub-surface benefits.
The disrespect so visible at NTC 2019 is not new. It has been evident before and since May 2015. When APNU+AFC voted against the budgetary allocations for the Amerindian Development Fund and the upgrading of hinterland airstrips in 2014, APNU and the AFC disrespected the Amerindians. After May 2015 when they dismissed more than 2,000 community development officers in Amerindian communities, it was an assault on Amerindian dignity. This is the track record of APNU+AFC and the NTC 2019 disrespect is just another visible assault on Amerindians by APNU+AFC.

Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

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