Chinese Landing council urges gov’t to engage with it on protection measures for villagers
The Chinese Landing Village Council is calling on the government to engage with it on implementing the recommendations of the IACHR on the protection of residents of the north west community and it has also raised the matter of the ban on villagers’ small mining which it says is affecting livelihoods.
For years, the village council has tussled with miners and on July 21, 2023, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued Resolution 41/2023, through which it granted precautionary measures in favour of members of the Indigenous Carib Community, who it said are “currently at serious, urgent risk of suffering irreparable harm to their human rights”.
The government has since written the IACHR – a principal and autonomous body of the Organization of American States - requesting a withdrawal of the precautionary measures, stating that the granting of the measures was based on misrepresentation.
In a statement yesterday, the council urged the government to engage with the village in good faith to implement the recommendations of the IACHR. It noted that news releases in January this year reported the government as saying that it had asked the IACHR to withdraw the precautionary measures granted in favour of Chinese Landing but that the council to date has not seen any indication that this request was granted.
“In fact, we and the Government have recently received a letter from the Commission indicating that it will continue to monitor the implementation of the precautionary measures”, the Council’s statement said.
It said that it has asked for the Commission’s support to urge the Government to work with it to implement the precautionary measures.
“Specifically, we have asked the Commission to support our requests to the Government to: (1) remove all weapons from the mining concessions inside our titled lands; (2) ensure that there are independent police and mines officers stationed to address complaints of legal or rights violations in the village; (3) revoke the concessions held by Mr. (Wayne) Vieira inside our titled lands – or at a minimum, to let the Court of Appeal know that it agrees to our motion for an expedited hearing in our case seeking to clarify the land rights at issue; and (4) to lift the ban on our villagers’ own small mining, as this ban is negatively affecting our livelihoods and has no apparent connection to the reason for the precautionary measures”, the council said.
The council added that since August last year, it has not heard further from the Government about implementation of the precautionary measures. It said that the government team that visited Chinese Landing in August told the council that they were only there to look at one of the Commission’s three recommendations. The Commission’s other recommendations required the Government consulting and agreeing with the council on the necessary measures to take to protect villagers’ rights. The Government has not done this, the council said.
“In August, the Government banned all mining inside Chinese Landing’s titled lands. We are unclear on what legal basis the Government has done this. While we agree that banning outside mining is connected to the reason the precautionary measures were granted, this ban has not actually caused the miners and their weapons to remove from our lands. They instead appear to remain, waiting for the ban to be lifted. In just the past couple of weeks, it appears that shelving of a hill at Tassawini has re-started and excavation is about to start up again”, the council said in the statement.
In the meantime, it said that the ban on villagers’ small mining is cutting off an important source of livelihoods.
“Mining has traditionally been the primary form of cash income for our village, which we rely upon to send our children to school or to be able to travel by boat to access any services, such as health services, outside our village. It is unclear to us how stopping our villagers from earning a livelihood will help address the risks we face from these outside miners on our lands. We have asked the Government in several letters to explain the legal basis for this ban. We have not received any responses”, the council said.
On January 10 this year, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira said that the government had written to the IACHR requesting a withdrawal of the precautionary measures granted in favour of Chinese Landing.
She said that the granting of the measures was based on misrepresentation.
“What we did with Chinese Landing, we asked for a withdrawal of the precautionary measures as they are not based on facts. It’s a misrepresentation, so we asked formally, the IACHR, to withdraw the petition against Guyana,” she affirmed.
The minister disclosed said the government has since submitted a report to the IACHR, which includes a body of evidence to support its position.
While confirming that the IACHR received the government report, Teixeira said a substantive response is still forthcoming regarding her government’s request to withdraw the precautionary measures granted in favour of the aggrieved residents of Chinese Landing.
On March 8, 2023, the IACHR received a request for precautionary measures from Chinese Landing, the Amerindian People’s Association of Guyana, and the Forest People’s Programme (on behalf of the members of the Indigenous Carib Community of Chinese Landing).