State-sponsored human trafficking in Guyana?

Dear Editor,
Guyana, and in particular successive PPP/C administrations, have always had a friendly, open and liberal immigration policy. With a small population and limited skills base, PPPC was open to new skills and investments coming to Guyana. There has never been any quota system or differentiation — whether based on nationality, ethnicity, class, religion, or gender — of visitors or persons wishing to study, work, vacation, shop, or invest in our country.
Guyana has prided itself, as a signatory to the CARICOM Treaty of Chaguaramas, in treating CARICOM nationals entering Guyana better than the treatment Guyanese have encountered in some CARICOM countries.
However, the Minister of Citizenship, on July 27th and August 3rd, 2016, was questioned by the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Foreign Relations in regard to the reasons for the denial of entry to 168 CARICOM nationals to Guyana in the preceding 12 months. In light of the Freedom of Movement of People and Skills in CARICOM, this was of some concern to the Committee.
The Minister, in responding, advised that those persons who were denied entry did not have “sufficient funds” to support themselves whilst in Guyana. His response and recommendations of the Committee were included in its Fourth Periodic Report, adopted in the National Assembly on February 9, 2017. None of those recommendations has thus far been implemented.
Over the last eight months, the PPP has repeatedly referred, at various press conferences, to information it has been receiving in regard to the large numbers of Haitian nationals who are being met airside when they land at Cheddi Jagan International Airport and escorted through the immigration process to waiting vehicles. There are suspicions that Haitians are being trafficked through Guyana, but there appears to be an additional twist to the story. More information is surfacing: that in return for their “safe passage” through Guyana, they are required to obtain, and are facilitated in obtaining, Guyanese identity documents such as birth certificates, national identification cards with Guyanese names, which are then left in Guyana after they depart. For what purpose, one may wonder; and who is behind this?
As a result, the PPP/C members of the same parliamentary committee raised concerns in regard to the Haitian arrivals and trafficking. The Committee then, in February 2018, sought information from Minister Felix about the number of Haitians entering and departing Guyana. The Minister, in his response to the Committee on May 23, 2018, provided information on the arrival and departure of Haitians and seven other nationalities entering annually for the years 2013 to 2018 (April).
Of interest, the Minister did not provide figures for CARICOM nationals, nor other countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, USA, Canada, UK, etc., whose citizens also enter Guyana for work or study.
When one analyses these figures, the following comparative breakdown makes the trends more visible:-
These figures reveal that the years 2016 and 2017 show the highest upsurge in numbers of arrivals of several nationalities. Since the Minister did not provide any information on those who were denied entry, one assumes that these arrival figures are in fact persons who entered Guyana. In contrast to the years 2015-2016, wherein 168 CARICOM nationals were refused entry due to lack of “sufficient funds”, one has to ask if all of these people listed by Minister Felix arrived with “sufficient funds”?
Unlike what has been popularly conveyed for years by the PNC, and then the APNU and AFC in opposition, and now in the APNU+AFC in Government: that Brazilians, Chinese, Indians, and more recently Venezuelans were flooding in and taking over, the truth is far different when one examines these figures for 2013-2015 and 2015-2018.
True to form, Minister Henry, during the discussion in the committee in regard to these figures and links to human trafficking, pointed rather ridiculously to the high arrivals of Bangladeshis compared to the Haitians.
However, we cannot find any evidence of the presence of such a large number of 5,485 Haitians, nor of 17,615 Cubans, in Guyana. Twenty-three thousand people who speak different languages in a small population such as ours would be easily discernible.
Therefore something is going on. The most logical explanation is that Guyana is being used as a transshipment point for a large and well organised human trafficking ring, on a scale only possible with the collaboration of key officials within the Government. Based on these figures, these victims of human trafficking may not only include Haitians, but also other nationalities.
However, the additional information that one of the nationalities, in this case Haitian, is being used to create new identities with Guyanese birth certificates is also of great significance, as our nation prepares for the 2018 Local Government and 2020 general and regional elections. If new identities are being created, then why are these documents not being used by the Haitians for their onward movement? Why are these documents being kept with their handlers based in Guyana? For what purpose? Is this to be used to register new voters? And whose identities are they using? Persons who have died or who have emigrated whose names are already on the national registration database and the voters lists?
The champion of TIPs in Guyana, Minister Broomes, who received a US Presidential Award for her work in exposing cases of TIPs, appears to be rather quiet now. The Ministerial Task Force on TIPs 2017 records figures of cases of human trafficking being prosecuted, but all of the victims are Guyanese.
However, the disinterest of the Government in addressing the concerns publicly expressed months ago by the Leader of the Opposition regarding human trafficking of Haitians may in itself be a telling indictment.
Where there is smoke there is fire, and the information regarding the Haitians as possible victims of human trafficking linked to another agenda by Government officials cannot be ignored. This issue demands a full investigation.
It is time for the international, including the relevant UN bodies and the IOM, as well as the diplomatic community to pay closer attention to this development. The annual US TIPs report placed Guyana on the watch list for two years in a row because there were too few cases of human trafficking in 2006-2013, I hope that the US officials will pay more interest to this unusual movement of unaccounted people through and in Guyana.
I believe that any information concerning victims of human trafficking, whether Guyanese or any other nationality, must be treated seriously. And thus, the specific information regarding the movement of Haitians and their obligations to acquire Guyanese identity documents in order to have “safe passage”, must be investigated.
Whilst the queries started with the Haitians, one cannot now not consider that other nationalities may also be victims of a human trafficking ring which could only function on this large scale with the collusion and collaboration of the state.

Rspectfully,
Gail Teixeira, MP