The dossier on government’s alleged human rights abuses that was being compiled by the joint opposition is complete and will be made public on Tuesday, November 17.
The dossier will be unveiled at City Hall at 10 am, an invitation from Desmond Trotman on behalf of the Joint Opposition Political Parties (JOPP) said. The Alliance For Change, the Guyana Action Party, the National Front Alliance, the People’s National Congress/ Reform and the Working People’s Alliance had announced a partnership in August to sensitise local and international organisations on drug-convict Roger Khan’s saga and to force greater accountability from the government.
The joint opposition had agreed to compile a comprehensive dossier cataloguing the government’s human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killings, torture and complicity with known organised crime gangs and narco-traffickers and the resulting corruption. The dossier will be submitted to local, regional and international bodies, including the courts with the appropriate jurisdiction and the public.
In the invitation, Trotman said that “the grave developments deriving from the involvement of senior officials and functionaries of the Government of Guyana in the drug trade, the torture and murder of more than two hundred citizens in collusion with self-confessed drug lord, Roger Khan, a convicted prisoner in the USA, are now a matter of public record”.
He pointed out that the developments have both national and international security implications as well as serious consequences for the stability of the State, and this impelled the JOPP to launch an initiative to call upon President Bharrat Jagdeo to establish an international Inquiry into these vital matters.
It was in this context that the JOPP undertook the preparation of a dossier to make the case for such an inquiry.
AFC Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan, who had pushed for the preparation of the dossier, had earlier explained that it was receiving input from several sources, including local experts as well as assessments by international organisations on government corruption and state abuses. Ramjattan had told this newspaper that they had been successful in communicating to the citizenry the wrongdoing that has taken place since 2002.
He said the dossier would aid in internationalising the issue, and would justify the call for an international inquiry.
Khan, who said he fought crime with the assistance of government officials, was last month in the US, sentenced to two 15-year and one ten-year prison terms, all of which would run concurrently, meaning he would serve a 15-year federal prison term for convictions for drug smuggling, witness tampering and gun possession.
