Residents of Chinese Landing, an indigenous community in the Moruca-sub region, Region One, yesterday renewed their call on government to bring an end to a decades-old land dispute between their community and medium-scale miner, Wayne Vieira.
Calls for a settlement of the land dispute come days after a team of three Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) officers visited the community and halted mining operations conducted by residents.
Supported by wardens from the Ministry of Natural Resources and ranks of the Guyana Police Force, the team, headed by Michael Howard, a senior officer at the GGMC, entered the area on May 1, halted mining operations and dismantled camps.
“The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, headed by Michael Howard and escorted by heavily armed members of the Guyana Police Force descended upon our community last week with no advance notification nor written justification for entering community lands. They came to dismantle our mining operations and evict us from our own lands. They showed us no written order or basis for acting,” Toshao Orin Fernandes said yesterday.
At a press conference held at Regency Hotel on Hadfield Street, Fernandes said the actions of the GGMC officials and supporting officers indicate they have “no respect for the people of Chinese Landing.”
“The government does not seem to respect us or care for our rights. They come into our village, our home, without asking permission and without notifying us in advance,” the community leader stressed.
“They claimed that they were acting upon instructions of the Minister of Natural Resources [Raphael Trotman] and the GGMC, based on a ruling by the Caribbean Court of Justice in 2017,” the Toshao added.
Fernandes, however, pointed out that they “have sought legal opinion [which was interpreted] that the CCJ decision does not order GGMC to destroy our property and evict us from our own legally recognised lands.”
“We are hereby calling on the government of Guyana to protect the rights of not just Chinese Landing, but the indigenous peoples of Guyana. We further call on the Government of Guyana to take responsibility for its huge blunder on selling out our lands to this miner and work to rectify it with us in the shortest possible time…” Fernandes announced.
Discussions between the GGMC and representatives of the Chinese Landing community took place in 2018, when it was pointed out that a ruling of the Caribbean Court of Justice affirmed Vieira’s rights to the mining concession and copies of the Order of Court were shared, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) said.
In a statement issued last week, the MNR, while confirming the visit of the team to the community, said the objective of the visit was “to remove all mining operations from Wayne Vieira’s mineral properties located within the Tassawini (Chinese Landing) Amerindian Reserve, Barama River.”
It was further stated that the Toshao and Councillors were informed of the purpose of the visit and their intended activities when the team visited.
Estimated
There are an estimated 17 illegal and heavily mechanized mining operations on Wayne Vieira’s mineral property V-4/MP/000, the ministry said, explaining that enforcement officers dismantled 11 wooden sluice-boxes and retrieved several pieces of tackling associated with the mining operations. The remaining persons had asked for additional time to remove their equipment from the mineral property.
The ministry stated that Vieira would be expected to secure the mineral property within a specified period.
Nonetheless, Sharon Atkinson, Vice- Chairman of the Moruca sub-district Council, said that the village received its land title in 1976 and in 1995, the GGMC sold four medium-scale mining blocks located within the village, in an auction, without the knowledge of the community. In 1991, Chinese Landing got an absolute grant, reaffirming its title recorded on 21, October 1991, but with effect from 24, April 1976, she said.
Providing background on the issue, she stated that between 1998 and 2001, GGMC converted the prospecting permits to mining permits, “again without any notice to our community and violating our right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent. Since 1998, we tried at first to find some amicable solutions and come to agreement with Wayne Vieira, but we found ourselves being coerced and manipulated,” she said, while noting that they shared an agreement with Vieira where he was required to pay a one percent royalty to their community on production. However, he only honoured that obligation for a short period.
“By 2004, we as a community decided we would not accept any further agreements with the miner. Since then, we have sought the interventions of various government agencies and ministries, asking that they stop renewing Vieira’s mining permits and that he be ordered to stop working on our lands without our permission,” Atkinson pointed out.
The community was brought some relief in 2010 when the GGMC issued Cease Work Orders against Vieira, on the basis that he was violating the Amerindian Act by mining without their permission.
Atkinson noted that during the 2018 National Toshaos Confer-ence, Minister Trotman had informed them that, “at the end of the day mining cannot take place without the permission of the community and it is the duty of the miner to approach the community for permission and to settle appropriate terms. So that right remains.”
Vieira’s mining concessions, Fernandes said, cover the majority of their titled lands and extend over their farming grounds and existing farms.
Notwithstanding, the community is of the view that while the CCJ ruling in 2017 says that GGMC officers cannot enforce the Amerindian Act by issuing cease work orders, there was nothing in the CCJ decision that ordered the GGMC to act against the community.
The community is of the view that residents should be given the first opportunity to engage in mining operations and should be consulted at all times by the GGMC and other agencies looking to utilise their lands for mining.
The Chinese Landing mining operations support not just residents of that community but the entire Moruca sub-district, which consists of close to 12,000 people, Atkinson said. She noted that everyone in the region benefits either directly or indirectly.
“We are descendants of the Carib nation and our lands are the lands where our ancestors lived and that we hope our generations to come will call home,” Toshao Fernandes said, before explaining that they were forced to change their means of survival.
He noted that because of financial obligations, the community had to seek new forms of employment but continued to engage in traditional means of survival.
“…recognizing that we must take steps to enable our people to meet the needs in a changing world… Mining as a livelihood support[ed] our health and education systems…we need to find money to send our children to school, we needed to invest in our teachers’ quarters which were all but non-existent, many teachers did not want to work in our village,” the Toshao stressed.
During the press conference, Fernandes said residents are of the belief that their rights to occupy and use their lands and resources freely have been stripped from them. “We ask that the government start respecting us and respecting our human rights to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), to our lands, and to our livelihoods,” he stated.
“We want the government to respect the fact that we are traditional owners of these lands and resources, also acknowledge that we have title to show our ownership of the lands, and we call on them to honour our right to Free, Prior and informed consent before they issue mining concessions on our traditional lands,” the Toshao declared further.
Asked if there are any plans for a legal challenge for the land rights issue to be resolved, the Toshao and his Councillors responded in the affirmative. During the response, it was pointed out that they were never made aware of the court proceedings filed by Vieira and as a result, they were not represented.
