Guyana appears on UN’s “shame” list

Sep 13, 2018 News

A UN report on human rights has point to alleged reprisals at the Lusignan
Prisons against an inmate for cooperating with human rights workers.

The United Nations has named Guyana among 38 “shameful” countries in its latest human rights report.
According to the report, “Cooperation with the United Nations, its representatives and mechanisms in the field of human rights”- Report of the Secretary-General, the alleged incident has to do with the Lusignan Prisons, East Coast Demerara.
The report, released yesterday, said that on 18 October 2017, the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent expressed concern about alleged reprisals by prison authorities and guards against an individual.
The name was withheld by the Working Group, the report said.
The individual was incarcerated at Lusignan Prison. The man was interviewed during their visit to Guyana in October 2017.
“They subsequently received information that the individual had been verbally threatened by the prison authorities and guards for having cooperated with them.”
The report did not give more details.
But while Director of Prisons Gladwin Samuels confirmed that the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent had visited the prisons, he is unaware of any inmate being threatened after the group’s visit.
“I’m unaware of any such incident. I would wish for them to say who (the inmate was), “Samuels said. He also said that after the visit, the Organisation had recommended that the Lusignan Prison be closed.
The 38 “shameful” countries included China and Russia. The report said that the countries carried out reprisals or intimidation against people cooperating with it on human rights, through killings, torture and arbitrary arrests.
The annual report from U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, also included allegations of ill-treatment, surveillance, criminalisation, and public stigmatisation campaigns targeting victims and human rights defenders.
“The world owes it to those brave people standing up for human rights, who have responded to requests to provide information to and engage with the United Nations, to ensure their right to participate is respected,” Guterres wrote according to a Reuters report..
“Punishing individuals for cooperating with the United Nations is a shameful practice that everyone must do more to stamp out.”
The 38 countries included 29 countries with new cases, and 19 with ongoing or continuing cases.
The new cases were in Bahrain, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, India, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Myanmar, Philippines, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
Governments frequently charged human rights activists with terrorism or blamed them for cooperating with foreign entities or damaging the state’s reputation or security, it said.
“(There is a) disturbing trend in the use of national security arguments and counter-terrorism strategies by states as justification for blocking access by communities and civil society organisations to the United Nations,” the report said.
Women cooperating with the U.N. had reported threats of rape and being subject to online smear campaigns, and U.N. staff often encountered people who were too afraid to speak to them, even at U.N. headquarters in New York and Geneva.
U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour, who will present the report to the Human Rights Council next week, said in a statement that the cases in the report were the tip of the iceberg.
“We are also increasingly seeing legal, political and administrative hurdles used to intimidate – and silence – civil society,” he said.
Some of the countries listed are current members of the Human Rights Council, which adopted a resolution last year reaffirming that everyone – individually or in association with others – had a right to unhindered communication with the U.N.