Although the Toshao of Kaikan village, in Region Seven, says that the residents do not want the military present in their community, Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Chief of Staff Brigadier Mark Phillips yesterday reiterated the army’s commitment to working with them.
“We met with the residents before Christmas and assured them that we are committed to working with them to erase years of a strained relationship…since then, there have been no new complaints,” Phillips told Stabroek News yesterday.
However, in a letter published in the January 18 edition of Stabroek News, Toshao Claude Anselmo said that the village was sticking by a longstanding call for “the GDF barracks to be removed from within the community, and by extension from within the titled lands of Kaikan Village.”
“We have had years of very unpleasant interaction with the soldiers of the Guyana Defence Force and have lost confidence in them, and hence the strong request not to have them in our community,” he wrote in the letter, where he objected to what he dubbed a misleading report on a government team’s visit to the village, in light of the December 4, 2015 landing of a Venezuelan helicopter in his village.
According to Anselmo, the account of the landing painted by the Government Information Agency (GINA) distorted the incident, which had prompted the village to write to President David Granger about the behaviour of the local army.
Anselmo said when the helicopter landed, some curious residents went out onto the airstrip to see what was happening, including two members of the GDF in civilian clothes.
“The helicopter was on the ground for less than ten minutes. The engine was still running when the pilot came out of the helicopter and called one of the women who was watching to ask if this village was San Juan on the Venezuela border. The pilot asked the question in Spanish and the woman told him that this village was Kaikan on the Guyana shore. Immediately the pilot went back into the helicopter and took off for San Juan and the residents went back home,” he wrote.
He noted that the local soldiers, on recognising the helicopter, had run back to their barracks.
“Nobody saw heavily armed soldiers and there was nothing intimidating about this incident until 25 minutes later, after the helicopter had taken off, the GDF soldiers based at Kaikan came out onto the airstrip armed with their weapons and started running all over the village. Villagers ran for shelter and were frightened. One of the soldiers stopped a female resident who was going home from a creek, pointing his weapon at her. She became frightened and begged him not to shoot her. She was horrified and intimidated.
We find that the behaviour of the GDF soldiers was unprofessional and aggressive; some of the residents of Kaikan were accused of being Venezuelan nationals and were asked to produce their national identification cards and birth certificates,” Anselmo added.
Phillips said that Anselmo’s complaints were related to him and he assured that they have not fallen on deaf ears. “We heard the complaints and we have addressed the complaints.
The persons who were there are not there anymore. Every three months, we change over our people there …we are very careful about who we send there to ensure there are no more of those complaints,” he noted.
“No new complaints were made. I had met with the village captain in December…no new complaints have been made and we continue working with the community to foster good relationships. There are some projects [where] we are working with the community, we understand the relationship was strained over the years,” he added.
Stabroek News was told that the concerns of the villagers, which have spanned over 25 years, are complicated because the army Base is located within the community and not on its outskirts. “There has been this discomfort, for want of a better word, between the soldiers and the villagers dating decades back… it goes very deep. The army knows of their concerns and I am glad they are working to heal those tensions…,” one senior army officer said.
However, he added that the healing should come soon as the area was a vital security strategic point for the army in its manning of the country’s borders.
Toshao Anselmo, however, disagrees. “…We are also aware that it does not require the soldiers to be stationed in our community for them to be effective in the defence of our country. Therefore, once again, we would like everyone to know that we are not pleased with the coverage of the meeting and would like to see balanced and full coverage of the meeting,” he wrote.
