Following the explosive conversation between Attorney General Anil Nandlall and a Kaieteur News reporter last month, the Inter-American Com-mission on Human Rights (IACHR) on November 18th called on the Guyana Government to take the necessary measures to protect the lives of three members of the newspaper.
Following a complaint on behalf of the newspaper on November 5th by attorney Christopher Ram, the IACHR said that after analyzing the information presented it had found that a prima facie case had been made “that the members of the Kaieteur News journal are in a serious and urgent situation, since their lives and personal integrity face an imminent risk of irreparable harm”.
The KN trio was identified as Leonard Gildarie, the reporter that Nandlall had the conversation with, KN proprietor Glenn Lall and the newspaper’s Editor, Adam Harris.
The IACHR further requested the Government of Guyana to agree on the measures to be adopted with the trio and their representatives and to report on the actions taken to probe the alleged facts that have given rise to the precautionary measure as to prevent their recurrence.
The IACHR said it wished to point out that “in accordance with Article 25(8) of its Regulations, the granting of precautionary measures and their adoption by the State shall not constitute a prejudgment of any violation of the rights protected in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man or any other applicable applicants”.
The IACHR intervention is a further embarrassment for the Guyana Government over the Nandlall call which has generated international scrutiny.
The government has stood by Nandall despite the threatening language and crude behaviour. It was the threatening language which caused Lall to lodge a complaint at Police Headquarters, Eve Leary and which prompted Lall to approach the IACHR for relief. In one section of the profanity-laced 19-minute conversation, Nandlall told Gildarie “Everybody doesn’t have a newspaper to use as a weapon”. He continued, “I told Adam [Adam Harris, KN editor], I said, ‘Adam, people got weapons, right. They ain’t got newspaper to use as a weapon; they got weapons. And when you continue to attack people like that and they have no way of responding they will just walk with they weapon into that same [expletive] Saffon Street office and wha’ come shall do.”
He then added, “And innocent…” before changing course and adding, “Peter will have to pay for [expletive] Paul in that way. I tell you, honestly, man to man that will happen soon.” He further advised the reporter to “get out of deh,” the quicker, the better.
Police are still investigating the complaint lodged by Lall against Nandlall and it is yet unclear if Nandlall has been questioned by the police. Nandlall in a clarifying statement after a furore erupted had said that he was unaware of any planned violence against any newspaper or any reporter
The IACHR noted that the mechanism of precautionary measures is a part of the Commission’s function of overseeing Member States’ compliance with the human rights obligations set forth in Article 106 of the Charter of the Organization of American States.
The IACHR said that the Inter-American Commis-sion and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have repeatedly established that precautionary and provisional measures have a two-fold nature, precautionary and protective.
“Regarding their protective nature, the measures seek to avoid irreparable harm and preserve the exercise of human rights. Regarding their precautionary nature, the measures have the purpose of preserving a legal situation being considered by the IACHR, Their precautionary nature aims to preserve those rights at risk until the petition in the inter-American system is resolved”, the human rights body said.
It asserted that in the present situation, the Commission considers that “the requirement of seriousness is met, in light of the alleged threat express-ed against the lives and personal integrity of the Kaieteur News personnel, within the framework of their right to freedom of expression. In particular, the information presented suggests that the purported threat was oriented toward preventing the members of Kaieteur News from freely exercising their role as journalists, related to a series of reports on corruption cases, among other issues, which allegedly affected high ranking officials within the Government.”
