Last week in an advertisement in this newspaper, miners, shopkeepers and the residents of Eteringbang related how they were being harassed and robbed by the National Guard and infamous Sindicato gang of Venezuela. To the average coastlander Eteringbang and the Cuyuni River where it is located belong to another world which hardly impinges on them. But the area is very much a part of this land, and what happens there is of critical importance to all of us in terms of the definition of our territorial space and our sovereignty over that space.
The advertisement took the form of an open letter to the authorities which they exhorted to intervene in the situation. Between Akarabisi and Eteringbang, they wrote, there were four checkpoints, three operated by the Sindicatos and one by the Venezuelan National Guard, where they would have to stop and allow their boats to be checked. They would then have to pay for whatever they were transporting, be it food or other supplies, and when it was fuel the charge was $2,000 per drum. They said this had been going on for more than six years, and as a consequence some people had been forced to relocate. Those who stayed had only themselves to rely on despite the presence of the police and GDF on the border.
Region Seven Police Commander Dion Moore to whom this newspaper subsequently spoke denied there was any security issue at Eteringbang. “It’s under control and it’s on Venezuela shores. We have no reports of them coming over. Our ranks are on the landing and at the border line during day and by nights,” he was quoted as saying. While he acknowledged that gang members with small arms were present from time to time, they remained on the Venezuelan side he insisted. Furthermore, since those matters had been reported in the past they had been dealt with by joint patrols with the GDF, and since then there had not been an increase in the reports.
It might be remarked that the fact that there has been no increase in reports doesn’t mean there has been a decrease, in addition to which there is the likelihood that Guyanese citizens have stopped reporting because it doesn’t produce any great improvement in the situation. That people have failed to report is a possibility the Commander concedes, since he said a complaint might go on social media, but not be relayed directly. For the matters to be dealt with, he said, people should go in and report to the officials.
A shop owner to whom this newspaper spoke said that what was being affirmed by the authorities was simply not the case, and that the situation was certainly not under control.
Since the airstrip had been closed for eight months, travel by river was the only way to go, and that is where you had to face the Venezuela National Guard. All incidents, he said, would take place in Guyana’s waters, where they would shoot into the water until a boat came to a halt. When you came out of the boat you would be questioned as to your destination, and ordered to pay a sum depending on what the vessel was transporting.
“I was in the water about 10 to 15 times this year because … I had no choice,” he said. “The last incident made me not sleep for like weeks because they came out and point their guns in my face and the one before that I was driving my boat and they fire three shots at me,” he related. Hardly surprisingly the shopkeeper described himself as being traumatised.
There are various issues arising from this. The first is that even if indeed the checkpoints are on the Venezuelan bank, the fact that they are firing at Guyanese boats in the river means effectively they are firing into Guyana’s territory at Guyana’s citizens. That should be unacceptable to our security services. The impression is given from what the shop owner says, that he believes our vessels sail on the Guyana ‘side’, while the accounts do not altogether make clear whether Venezuelan vessels come out from the checkpoints, or whether their personnel just fire from the bank into the water to force Guyanese boats to dock there.
Either way, it is worth emphasizing again that there is no Venezuelan side or Guyana side of the Cuyuni River. Under the 1899 Award this stretch of the waterway belongs entirely to this country from bank to bank, and the Venezuelan National Guard in particular has no business there except it obtains explicit permission from the Government of Guyana. The Sindicatos, of course, are a criminal gang on both sides of the border, although Caracas appears to tolerate them for its own political reasons. The second matter is one of Guyana’s all-too typical project stories. In October of 2020 tenders were opened for the rehabilitation of the Eteringbang Airstrip, which was estimated to cost just over $63 million. Whatever the background to the story it would seem that the works were not done up to standard, and the airstrip soon began to deteriorate resulting in Public Works Minister Juan Edghill a year ago disclosing that the ministry had advertised for materials in order to upgrade it, and that the work would be undertaken by local labour under the supervision of the GDF.
What has happened since then has never been revealed, and it is not known what is causing the hold-up of work now. Whatever the case, the result has been that most things brought in to the area have to come by river, because they cannot be flown in. A functioning airstrip would certainly relieve some of the pressure on citizens living there, since they would have less need to use the river, although that would not excuse the failure of the authorities to make it safe.
However, there is a caveat to this. Miners in that area have always resorted to buying fuel from Venezuela because it is close by and so much cheaper there, even with the surcharge added on by this or that vendor, plus the fees from the corrupt National Guard or whoever. Flying in fuel for dredges is hardly an economic proposition. As such, the miners, in particular, will need to use the river, and considering it is our river they should be able to do so in peace. If the Venezuelans seek to put measures in place on their own turf in relation to the sale of fuel to outsiders, then that is their right. This was done for a time when Hugo Chávez was in office, although nowadays it is unlikely that Caracas has the power to enforce order in its frontier regions. What they do not have the right to do, however, is terrorize our citizens on the Cuyuni.
In the meantime, in the absence of the airstrip, even the police seem to be hamstrung at the moment, the shop owner telling our reporter that they are currently using the medex’s boat. That is not indicative of the kind of control to which the Commander was referring.
One wonders too if the situation at Eteringbang itself has improved since last year when a Brazilian who ran a guest house was murdered allegedly by Venezuelans. A relative told this newspaper that Eteringbang was not a safe place to operate a business because of the Sindicatos. “They would go there,” she said, “and if you talk anything about them or tell the police about them … they come to you in that manner [ie murder]”. She went on to say, “There is a lot of business there but you don’t know who is who … That place really need security … They have a lot of business, hotel, big supermarket and so and everybody just walking through and coming over including these Sindicatos.”
Following that killing, business people in the area raised concerns about security. Regional Chairman Kenneth Williams had told this newspaper at the time that the matter had been discussed “extensively” at the Regional Intelligence Committee meeting and a decision had been taken by Commander Moore to increase security across the region. Mr Williams made reference to the Sindicatos, and said that additional forces had been dispatched to the border communities. “I have been assured that things are going to get better and all these security issues and criminal activities might reduce…” we quoted him as saying.
To what extent things did improve is not clear, because three months later, seven armed Venezuelans, possibly Sindicatos, invaded a businessman’s home in Eteringbang and stole two kilos of gold and an undisclosed amount of cash. Fortunately for him, perhaps, he was not home at the time.
But that is the thing about Eteringbang: it gives the appearance of being even less of a rule-governed location than the rest of society. No one could envisage members of the Sindicato gang turning up at Timehri, for example, and being given anything less than short shrift by the immigration officers there, while most likely they would find themselves in a holding cell prior to deportation. However, up to earlier last year, at least, they seem to have been coming and going at Eteringbang as they pleased. For the people who live in the area, of course, it will be difficult to distinguish ordinary Venezuelans from Sindicatos if the latter want to move around incognito, so to speak. But then in any case there isn’t any immigration control at that location.
It is not just unofficial infiltration that has gone on at Eteringbang and the mining areas; there have been any number of official violations of Guyana’s territory by its military personnel as well, both in the air and on the ground. And now we have the violation of Guyana’s riparian territory of both an official and unofficial nature. Eteringbang is not in the wilderness; it is an integral part of this country’s sovereign land space. The government in Georgetown cannot afford to allow that stretch of border to become fudged in national terms. It urgently needs to take the security situation in hand, and at the very least should hold an Intelligence Committee meeting both at the regional and national levels. The miners, shopkeepers and residents of Eteringbang are not imagining things.
