Any examination of the recent tragedy at Mahdia that claimed 19 lives would be incomplete without taking into account, the impact of mining on Indigenous communities.
This is according to a statement by the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) yesterday where it sought to bring into focus, the dark relationship between mining and the Indigenous peoples.
The GHRA asserted that it stands in solidarity with the Indigenous communities and families of those whose loved ones perished or were injured in the Mahdia school dorm fire on Sunday, but opined that “pledges to avoid future tragedies will be meaningful only if they focus on fundamental rather than circumstantial causes.”
In giving some background to the issue, the statement noted that before 2017, Mahdia in Region Eight existed as a “legal vacuum” as it was neither a landing, a village nor a township. In fact it was explicable only as a gold-mining site. Its original inhabitants from over a century ago were immigrant St Lucian families and Patamona porknockers. It noted that while the advent of the school, hospital and churches reflected the beginnings of a transitional community, the harsh reality remains that life there is subjugated to mining. Miners live and invest on the coast or in the Patamona communities with the area now dominated by Brazilian miners.
To thrust home this point, the release quoted a resident from a study published in 2016 whose statement to the GHRA, it says, captures the community’s dependence on mining.
“Every single person in this community is dependent on mining. When the mining do bad, we do bad. Yah understand me? Well in my opinion, the greatest draw back in my community from mining is the social drawback. They have terrible social backlash from mining. Because the miners work hard, they wash down, they have lots of money, right, at an individual level. Never mind when morning come they are going to send majority of that money to their family but for tonight, they have money so that means they are going to drink and party. So what you find that those who live here in these parts of the mining community, it’s just one big party, so we living in a dance. Ya understand? So that is not going to have a good social impact. One big party we will be living in. We live here. Remember they just came in for just the night but when they gone, a next one will come out, they party, a next one will come out, they party, we living in the party. Yah understand me?
Ya see Mahdia get a bad name about prostitution but ya see it’s not Mahdia people, not resident of Mahdia. People who trafficking and coming from outside see it as an opportunity for living but Mahdia residents and people who born and grow here not involved in prostitution. But they don’t have the equal opportunity like the people in the coastland.”
According to the GHRA, given this “explosive” combination of men flush with money, “Mahdia should be the last place in Guyana to locate a dormitory school for young Indigenous teenage girls.” It pointed out that worldwide, dormitory schools for Indigenous children have a “long, sad history” spurred frequently by “a confused ‘civilizing’ zeal, both religious and political, substituting the spurious safety of caged dormitories for the natural safety of their forest communities.”
And in an effort to present the reality of life for Mahdia school girls, the Association offered the following interview.
“Girl, and you know Mr… dah big boy, bring in two 16yrs old to go work in the backdam so dem girl tell me, that he say when ya come in heh, ya gun wuk for a lil three hundred, four hundred thousand dollar when ya go and cook. When she gone in deh was hell for them because they had to sleep with all dem man and cos Mr…. said if dem don’t sleep with them he gon kill dem right in deh cos dem ain’t know how to go home. Girl, all of that is human trafficking. True girl, and what the police do.? They ain’t do he nothing. True girl.”
A similar conversation went as follows:
“Rima: I can’t take how, when I walk in my school clothes these people say ‘sexy!’, oh gosh.
Diane: Girl, that is called sexual harassment and girl, right now, I notice with all these big men out there, I don’t know, like, when ya passing round deh is like deh get mouse in dem mouth or something, because they are always, you know,
Paul: dog season Diane: exactly and sometime ya walking on the road and somebody just smack ya and they would be just like, I just kidding, all of that comes under sexual harassment.
Paul: and if someone smack yuh on the butt that is also sexual harassment.
Diane: But come to think of it, what has been done with sexual harassment here? Even the police involved with young girls. What else can be done?”
Sadly, the release reports that similar “chilling” interviews in Port Kaituma, Bartica and Baramita also revealed persistent descriptions of sexual harassment reaching almost to “low intensity warfare” between miners and school-aged girl children.
The following interview this time is an extract from a coastlander who taught for many years in Baramita which lays bare the ugly truth, it said.
“So sexual harassment, that’s an issue, it may not be prevalent so much in the school under the watchful eyes of the teachers, between peers, but it may happen outside the school because they would have predators. It would be a plus for them if they can tame these girls. They say tame is to influence them then, towards having a relationship with them……Sometimes they would give these little girls biscuit and drink and give them money, drunk the parents and carry these little girls in the bush and rape them. …… You hear screams out of them during the night and who are there to help them because they are very dangerous. Because there are claims of illegal guns that they have or knives or cutlasses or so we could be harmed if we go to their help, ‘cause remember, we hear these cries in the dark.”
Based on the aforementioned observations, the GHRA is of the view that the tragedy in Mahdia clearly, therefore, cannot be treated as exceptional. The Association underscored that the “toxic” impact of mining on Indigenous communities is “pervasive, long-standing, predictable and widespread” across regions One, Seven, Eight, and South Region Nine, “creating upheavals with numbing regularity.”
It also pointed to the “epidemic” of suicides in Baramita, the “mayhem” in Echerak, where lawlessness claimed even the deaths of policemen and recently the appeals for help of the Toshao of Chinese Landing which fell on deaf judicial ears.
The release also touched on the matter of cellphones being used to groom young girls, an issue it noted that is not restricted to young indigenous girls. It surmised that this tragic situation is another reminder that Guyana as a whole is as complacent about potential bad outcomes from cellphones as the US is about guns in the hands of teenagers.
It also observed that efforts by both national and Indigenous leadership to combat rampant mining have been “ambivalent and inadequate” and posited that the “vigorous” action on the effects of mining on communities from the South Rupununi leadership has not been matched in other Regions. Hopefully the Mahdia tragedy would serve to encourage more vigorous leadership, the statement said.
Further, the GHRA described the complete official silence around the connection of the tragedy to mining as “ominous.” This however, it pointed out, is not to question the genuineness of the grief expressed by the various national authorities or to lay blame for the consequences of situations which have been tolerated for decades. However, as the Association sees it, the authenticity of any Commission of Inquiry will be measured by whether it focuses on stop-gap measures or addresses the “devastating” social, environmental and intergenerational consequences of mining.
“The suffocating national obsession with wealth currently promoted in Guyana as the solution to all ills is alienating to many Guyanese, as is using the occasion to rehearse all the Government has allegedly done for Amerindian communities. [Therefore] reducing any Inquiry into discussion of locks and grills without taking into account the larger issue of mining is not acceptable. Just as it is not possible to face the climate crisis without moving away from fossil fuels, it is not possible to save the Amazon and its peoples without a transition away from mining,” the release added.
