Vice President, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo Thursday offered his feedback on the 2022 State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Guyana and said there were a number of factual errors that now need correcting.
Dr. Jagdeo said the government intends to respond with its answers soon but he also believes that there are a number of other statements that when examined collectively shows how the Department feels about the PPP/C government.
“There are many factual errors in the report.
“I have seen a lot of issues with the latest report the State Department recently released and I’ve seen the many spins on it,” Jagdeo said.
On Wednesday, Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, SC, issued a statement to the same effect and pointed out that the claim that as of October 2022, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) did not investigate allegations of Sergeant Dion Bascom that the Police took bribes from a wealthy businessman to foil the investigation in the killing of Ricardo Fagundes, is palpably erroneous.
Jagdeo also pointed out that claims that the government was not meeting with Amerindian leaders, particularly from the Amerindian People’s Association, were also false.
“We passed a law that outlines a process to apply and secure titles. We don’t need to do that,” Jagdeo said.
The Vice President has, however, endorsed other aspects of the report favourable to the government.
“There are a number of definitive statements made by the State Department that when taken as a whole, you see how they characterise this government.”
Among the statements Jagdeo drew attention to were:
- The government took steps to identify, prosecute, and punish officials who committed human rights abuses or engaged in corruption.
- There were no reports of disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities.
- Members of both ethnicities held senior leadership positions of the government.
- Several domestic human rights groups generally operated without government restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases.
- There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees.
- Independent news media were active and expressed a wide variety of views without restriction.
Jagdeo said there was obvious nit-picking of the report to make the government look bad.
“We are not concerned about the complaints so much because we have answers to those but these are some of the key messages from the report,” the Vice President added.
