The government yesterday denounced the 2010 US State Department Report on Trafficking in Persons (TIP), rejecting the findings of a “significant” number of cases here and Guyana’s placement on the Tier 2 Watch List for the fourth consecutive year.
At a news conference shortly after the release of the report, Human Services Minister Priya Manickchand said angrily that it was “based on sheer ignorance and eye pass” and labelled it “crap,” while Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon suggested that there was something “sinister” in the findings. Manickchand warned that while the two countries have enjoyed very good relations over the years, “this inaccurate report hurts this friendship”.
Of major contention for the government is a statement in the report that indicates that some 984 children were removed from exploitive child labour from 2005 to 2009. Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett has been mandated to make contact with her counterparts in the US to ascertain from where the children were removed and under which project.
According to the report, “during the reporting period the US Department of Labour reported results of a project that withdrew 984 children from exploitive child labour in logging and saw-milling, fishing, hazardous farming, factory work, mining, and freight handling from 2005 to 2009.”
Just hours after the report was released, Luncheon arranged a press conference at the Office of the President, where he along with Manickchand, Minister of Education Shaik Baksh and Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee condemned the report. They referred to Guyana’s own recent TIP report which concluded that there is no evidence of large-scale trafficking in persons and registered “outrage” on behalf of their cabinet colleagues over the US report.
Luncheon said the fact that the government called a press briefing within hours of the US “un-embargoing“ the report was a signal that the country has serious concerns. “They have been unable to sustain the kind of diatribe that they run against Guyana transparently with numbers,” he said, adding, “we don’t doubt that trafficking exists. Whether it does to justify putting Guyana on Tier 2 and to offend this government and this nation with this tripe that is produced annually by the State Department by the most opaque of units… we have to repudiate it, we got to go public and we are going to be aggressive about this position.”
He added, “there is something sinister as far as we are concerned in manufacturing TIP and manufacturing TIP to the extent to be saying that Guyana you are going to be Tier 3 in 2011….” According to him, what Guyana has been saying and doing is consistent with its reality and has a lot to do with how the enormity of trafficking is judged. He said all in Guyana should have a keen interest in the way the country and government “is being held up and put to shame by the US government… for the most nebulous, unproven of grounds.”
He said the government is calling upon the TIP unit of the State Department to provide the information that will put to rest its reservations, especially when the threats of sanctions are being held out to enforce decisions that are made “on the most superficial, unproven, the dirtiest kind of information collection and analysis that goes on….”
Source country
According to the report, Guyana is a source country for men, women and children subjected to trafficking in persons, and specifically conditions of forced prostitution and forced labour. “Guyanese trafficking victim cases have been identified in the country, as well as in other countries in the region,” the report said. It also said that identified foreign victims have come from Venezuela and Brazil while forced prostitution occurs in brothels on the coast and around mining camps as well as in rum shops and Chinese restaurants. “The common Guyanese practice of poor, rural families sending children to live with higher income family members or acquaintances in more populated areas has the potential to evolve into forced domestic servitude,” the report said. It added that trafficking victims may not self-identify to authorities due to fear of retribution, fear of resettlement to abusive home situations, and lack of awareness that human trafficking is a crime. Those most vulnerable to trafficking, the report said, include Amerindian females, foreign women (such as Brazilians) in prostitution, and children.
“The Government of Guyana does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Despite these efforts, the government did not initiate any new prosecutions of trafficking offences during the reporting period and has yet to convict to punish any trafficking offenders under its five-year-old anti-human trafficking law,” it added. (Guyana recorded its first conviction on April 29, this year when Wesley Benn was sentenced to three years in prison after he was found guilty of trafficking two girls at One Mile Potaro Road, Bartica.)
The report said during the reporting period, the government and NGOs identified four victims of trafficking, “two of whom prison officials proactively identified”. It said the government provided some resources toward victim protection and local anti-trafficking groups but no suspected traffickers were charged, limiting the level of safety and protection provided to victims. “While the government took some tangible steps to raise awareness of human trafficking, including the establishment of focal point groups and an anti-trafficking task force, some local observers felt that the government discouraged discussions on developing effective strategies for combating this phenomenon of modern-day slavery,” it further stated.
In the area of prosecution, it stated that progress is perpetually delayed by judicial backlogs, incorrectly-filed paperwork or the failure of key parties to appear at hearings. “NGOs and one government official expressed concern that trafficking-related official complicity was a problem. It is reportedly common for defendants to bribe court officials for favourable rulings,” the report said.
Wrong
Addressing the report yesterday, Manickchand said that the US has again gotten its facts in Guyana wrong, noting that from the beginning the country has objected to its ranking. The government, she said, has always asserted that Guyana did not have significant numbers of trafficking victims. “We have said that we do not have significant numbers of victims. Moreover, no evidence of said significant numbers had been presented by any interested party, including the government of the United States of America,” she said.
Manickchand pointed out that there has never been a claim by the US that the government or its officials are complicit in trafficking and in fact they have made positive assertions to the contrary. “…[T]he resources that are being expended on the issue of combating trafficking in Guyana could arguably be called excessive for our country when one considers the scale of the problem in comparison to the other numerous social ills that we have to fight,” she added.
She said Guyana has not prosecuted and/or convicted any large numbers of persons for trafficking but argued that no apology should be made for this fact. “Every citizen is guaranteed the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction. We hold this presumption and its constitutional guarantee very dear to us. It must be protected at all times.”
According to Manickchand, the sloth of the justice system is being addressed through a massive investment programme—the Justice Sector Reform Strategy—whose conclusion and implementation should see all matters, including trafficking cases, being dealt with expeditiously. Further, she said the government has a duty to nurture confidence in the justice system and to assist victims throughout the process so that they may make informed choices.
She also noted that the US has explained that for countries to be placed on the Tier 2 list, they would have had to fail to increase efforts to combat human trafficking over the past year, fail to make significant efforts based on commitments of anti-trafficking reforms, and to see very significant victims or a significantly increasing victim population. “Taking cognisance of the definition of countries which should be on the Tier 2 watch list as well as the US report on Guyana, one cannot help but question whether the report about us and our subsequent placement on the tier ranking are not contradictory,” she declared.
