–slams strategy to ‘shift attention’ from ministry fire
President Bharrat Jagdeo says his human rights record is secure should anyone take a look at it, as he lashed out at sections of the media for what he described as a clever strategy to shift attention from the Ministry of Health fire to “the so-called human rights issue”.
There is a new campaign emerging, Jagdeo said at a press conference on Wednesday, while registering his concern over media reports on the fire and a recent press statement from the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA).
The GHRA statement raised the issue of political influence over security operations, while expressing concern that the prominent involvement of the military has given rise to excessive cruelty. In a statement, the body charged that a pattern suggests the emergence of a separate justice system to deal with those persons seen as “enemies of the state,” who are being labelled terrorists and seemingly deemed to have “forfeited” their human rights to arrest, dignified conditions of detention and a fair trial.
Countering it, the President referred to Troy Small, who has alleged torture at the hands of a gang, without naming him.
“So let us talk about the one person who may very well have had excesses, though this is yet to be investigated and confirmed, no one knows what has happened as yet there,” Jagdeo said in reference to the allegations raised by Small who is being treated as a suspect in the Health Ministry fire.
Jagdeo suggested that the strategy being employed is to blow up the Small issue to such an extent that the act of burning the ministry is masked as are the persons “who may very well be behind this act”. He added that it is a very clever strategy.
“Why bother with the fire, loss of millions, and people across the country suffering, their records lost, why bother with that? Let us focus on this one thing and make it look like the whole government is beating people on the streets and violating their human rights and all that stuff,” Jagdeo said.
The President asked rhetorically why those on “the campaign” would bother with the good part of the investigation when “you can go after the security forces for unprofessionalism” and also “the reward offered for information”.
He said that this is the kind of “warped logic” that is operating in the country saying that it is all a smokescreen painted deliberately so that people don’t see the real issues and the real perpetrators.
Jagdeo defended his offer of the $25 million reward for information on the fire.
“I thought it was so important for our country to find out who will commit this sort of act to offer such a reward, everywhere in the world the crime stoppers in the developed countries get rewards too, most countries where they have these programmes people get money for information,” he said.
The President said he believed it was a serious act and that he “needed to stop it” in an effort to arrest the perpetrators. According to him, if law enforcement had not moved swiftly it probably would not have been the end of the attacks.
“It would have been Ministry of Health and maybe the next day Ministry of Finance, and the next day GPL, then what would happen in the country? We offered a reward and if the reward helped fine,” Jagdeo stated.
The President was asked to respond to comments Opposi-tion Leader Robert Corbin made that alluded to whether Jagdeo was paying attention to the trial of former Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, and he replied that he does not fear a check into his human rights record.
“I am ready at any day to have a look into our human rights record, Corbin and mine [his history in government] and I can assure you that the person who will be taken away to any international tribunal for violating human rights would not be me,” Jagdeo said.
“That’s all I’d say. I am secure,” the President added.
