The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has expressed concern that the PPP/C government may be engaged in a strategy to control and muzzle non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Guyana.
The association in a release yesterday, pointed to a column carried in the state-owned Guyana Chronicle on June 6 with the heading “This NGO caricature must stop”. While it was not stated in the release, this column was written by Freddie Kissoon.
According to the GHRA, the column is designed to discredit NGOs and does so by a deliberate distortion of facts. The GHRA further contends that the column is best understood as a contribution to the campaign announced at the ruling PPP’s recent Party Congress to vigorously go after the ‘naysayers’ in civil society. It warned that the culmination of this campaign may well be manifest in the currently unavailable draft legislation on NGOs for which the Governance Minister, Gail Teixeira is responsible.
