Defending Guyana’s territory

In a very studied and calculated move, our most significant 60th anniversary national commemoration ceremony of our independence was held at Fort Island in the Essequibo River. President Ali was signalling our continuous possession of Essequibo for almost four centuries by raising our Golden Arrowhead at the spot where the Dutch had moved to defend their sovereignty over Essequibo, which is being threatened by Venezuela.
Back in 1679, Dutch Governor Abraham Beekman had ordered the construction of a fort on the island – to protect their settlements that had started upriver since 1621 – from threats by the Spanish. Significantly, it was then called FLAG ISLAND to announce Dutch sovereignty over the entire landmass drained by the Essequibo River and its tributaries such as the Cuyuni and Mazaruni. The wooden fort was largely completed by 1687, and later, in 1743–1744, the Dutch went on to construct the brick fortress known as Fort Zeelandia – the ruins of which remain on what we now call “Fort Island” – that became the capital of the Dutch colony of Essequibo. This was passed on to the British and then onto us at Independence on May 26, 1966.
President Ali did not mince words on the existential threat to our independence posed by Venezuela, coterminous with our independence: they invaded and occupied our half of Ankoko Island only months before. “60 years of sovereignty, and still, our territorial integrity is under assault. Venezuela has not relented, it has not restrained itself, and it has not respected the binding orders of the world’s highest court,” said the President. Alluding to the continuous assaults by succeeding Venezuelan regimes and their refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ that flowed out of the Geneva Agreement, which it reiterates it signed to settle the controversy, President Ali emphasised the following:
“This is not the language of a neighbour; this is not the language of international law; this is not the language of peace. That is why tonight my language cannot be ambiguous. The Essequibo is Guyana’s. It has never been Venezuelan, nor was it ever Spanish, and for more than a century and a quarter since the 1899 Arbitral Award settled its boundary, Guyana has indisputably included Essequibo. It is and will remain Guyanese.”
The Venezuelan response – in a statement published by Foreign Affairs Minister Yván Gil – was instantaneous and, typically, recalcitrant. It insisted, “Venezuela categorically rejects the provocative and delusional statements” of President Irfaan Ali, which “constitute a falsification of historical and legal truth”. It reiterated that Venezuela “does not and will not recognise the (World) Court’s jurisdiction to resolve this territorial dispute…(and)…it will never renounce its historical rights over the Essequibo region and will continue to defend them through the appropriate diplomatic, political, and legal channels.”
The statement, however, was quite disingenuous since it simultaneously announced unequivocally, “Guyana has an obligation to sit down face-to-face with Venezuela and negotiate directly a solution in accordance with international law and the mechanisms established in the 1966 Geneva Agreement.” Meaning that it rejects the interpretation of the ICJ – a neutral institution – of the Geneva Agreement’s stipulations to institute a legal settlement to the controversy created by Venezuela.
In view of its intransigence, the latest armed attack from the Venezuelan bank of the Cuyuni Border River last Friday, May 29, on a GDF patrol escorting civilians – in which one soldier was wounded – cannot be seen as coincidental. Earlier in the month – May 4th – one soldier had been wounded in another attack. The attacks began last year when, on February 19, before our Republic Day commemoration, an attack wounded six of our soldiers, who had to be medevacked to the city for treatment. Later on, on May 15, just before our Independence Commemoration, three attacks were made in identical circumstances on GDF patrols.
We must see the Venezuelan actions for what they are: part of an unremitting hybrid war now being conducted by acting President Delcy Rodríguez to seize Essequibo after their paper “annexation”. The ICJ’s judgement will not stop them.