Discrimination and marginalisation do exist in Guyana

Jan 30, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I agree with Godfrey Skeete’s angst over the alarming number of our young men who are resorting to crime as a means of livelihood. However, his assertion that hard evidence cannot be produced to back up claims of marginalisation is pathetically simplistic.
And it is thus because anyone with eyes and ears have to be cognizant of the fact that in the absence of a robust Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), there is no way anyone outside the circle of Government can produce the necessary evidence to back-up their claims.
The act of the Government – clearly stretching out its assent to legislation that brings about this pillar of democratic freedom – is just another ploy to hide what has become routine in the operations of the state.
Most Lexicons will define marginalisation as, “the social process of becoming or being made marginal especially as a group within the larger society”, and discrimination as, “unfair treatment of a person, racial group, minority, etc. action based on prejudice”
Even without access to the kinds of records and information that civil and human rights activists the world over use to prove these practices, it is possible to cite a slew of situations that cannot be seen in any other light.
What about the investigation by the Government’s own Ethnic Relations Commission into the issuance of Government Scholarships?
The two most prolific dispensers of those scholarships, the Office of the President and the Public Service Commission refused to allow access to its data in relation to who are getting those scholarships.
That the ERC still blithely came up with a conclusion that the selection process was not discriminatory, even without the largest portion of data necessary to come to such a finding, is not only evidence of discrimination in the selectoral process for issuing Government Scholarships, it also demonstrates that there are tools in place designed to obfuscate and hide the evidence.
If the removal of the subventions from Critchlow Labour College is not discriminatory, then that definition certainly needs to be changed. What about the money given out to host cultural events and festivals? Check out how much is provided to ACDA and how much is provided to its counterparts.
The Government of Guyana, like any other Government in any established democracy, exists under binding legal, moral and ethical obligations to ensure that the laws of the land are carried out in a fair and impartial manner.
That every suspect is entitled to, and do receive due process and the presumption of innocence. How therefore, must one interpret the difference in the Government’s reaction to the brutal assassination of Ronald Waddell, in comparison to its reaction to the killing of members of other ethnic groups? Ronald Waddell was not a criminal or a suspect in any criminal enterprise.
How therefore, can one interpret the Government’s pathetic somnolence while a campaign of lynching suspects, determined to be so by scurrilous vigilante gangs led by individuals who were either actively involved in criminality, or had a history of involvement in criminality, was in progress?
Did the Government ever publicly condemn these killings? Did the President ever take to the airwaves to demand an end to this murderous campaign, remind the nation about the sacrosanct elements in our jurisprudence and pledge to bring to justice those involved or responsible?
Were rewards ever offered for information with respect to these killings, as they were being offered in others? And just why are these questions not being dealt with by the so-called opposition and independent press?
In the US, a nation against which the Guyana Government constantly launches hypocritical criticisms, there are binding laws and regulations that allow minority groups, or any other group that perceives itself being marginalised, to access any information relevant to their situation.
This does not exist in Guyana. If the police in the US go into minority communities and carry out Soweto-style rounding up of minority youths, despite the rationalising innuendos from those justifying it on the basis that these are the sort of kids likely to become terrorists, or criminals, lawsuits would be flying all over the place. And there would be criminal as well as civil judgment against such practices.
There were loud noises from the very same quarters in Guyana when the George Bush Government sought to do exactly that in the American Muslim Community after 9/11. There are livid protests by members of the party in Government against these same kinds of ethnic and racial profiling when it is engaged in by the Israeli army on the West Bank and in other Palestinian enclaves.
Apparently they share sociological ideology that some people are more equal than others, or are entitled to certain human and civil rights privileges while others are not. How else can one interpret this?
There is gross marginalisation and discrimination in Guyana along economic lines, and along social lines.
If the state is confident that this is a myth, then it should open every record that documents its operations and allow its detractors to examine the data.
The silly retort that those who are alleging that these attitudes and behaviours are endemic in Guyana cannot produce, or are unwilling to produce, evidence to substantiate their claims, flies in the face of reason.
These kinds of evidence reside in the custody of the agency against whom the accusations are being made. Let them enact a robust FOIA and then let the chips fall where they may.
Robin Williams

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