Mahdia Secondary dorm fire raises questions about the future of Indigenous communities –GHRA

May 28, 2023 News

Kaieteur News – The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) on Saturday said it stands in solidarity with the indigenous communities and families of those whose loved ones perished or were injured by the Madhia Secondary School female dormitory fire last Sunday.

However, the human rights group said pledges to avoid future tragedies will be meaningful only if they focus on fundamental rather than circumstantial causes.

The GHRA noted that before 2017, Madhia existed as a legal vacuum.

The group explained that, “It was neither a landing, a village nor a township, Madhia was explicable only as a gold-mining site. Its original inhabitants from over a century ago were immigrant St. Lucian families and Patamona porknockers with the area now dominated by Brazilian miners. While the school, hospital and churches reflect the beginnings of a transitional community, life is subjugated to mining.”

According to the GHRA, miners live and invest on the coast or in the Patamona communities.

The Human Rights Association said that tragedy in Madhia cannot be treated as exceptional.

“The toxic impact of mining on indigenous communities is pervasive, long-standing, predictable and widespread across Regions 1, 7, 8 and South Region 9, creating upheavals with numbing regularity. The epidemic of suicides in Baramita, the mayhem in Echerak where lawlessness claimed even the deaths of policemen and recently the appeals for help of the Toshao of Chinese Landing which fell on deaf judicial ears.

While cell phones being used to groom young girls is not restricted to young indigenous, the tragedy is another reminder that Guyana as a whole is as complacent about potential bad outcomes from cell phones as the US about guns in the hands of teenagers,” the Association said adding that efforts by both national and indigenous leadership to combat rampant mining have been ambivalent and inadequate.

As a result, the GHRA noted that vigorous action on the effects of mining on communities from the South Rupununi leadership has not been matched in other Regions.

The Association expressed hope that the Madhia tragedy would serve to encourage more vigorous leadership.

“Moreover, the complete official silence around the connection of the tragedy to mining is ominous. This is not to question the genuineness of the grief expressed by the various national authorities or to lay blame for the consequences of situations which have been tolerated for decades. The authenticity of any Commission of Inquiry will be measured by whether it focuses on stop-gap measures or addresses the devastating social, environmental and intergenerational consequences of mining,” the Association added.

Additionally, the GHRA said that “the suffocating national obsession with wealth currently promoted in Guyana as the solution to all ills is alienating to many Guyanese, as is using the occasion to rehearse all the Government has allegedly done for Amerindian communities”.

“Reducing any inquiry into discussion of locks and grills without taking into account the larger issue of mining is not acceptable. Just as it is not possible to face the climate crisis without moving away from fossil fuels, it is not possible to save the Amazon and its peoples without a transition away from mining,” the GHRA said in a statement.