Govt asks Inter-American Human Rights Commission to withdraw Chinese Landing petition

Last Updated on Thursday, 11 January 2024, 7:32 by Denis Chabrol

The Guyana government has asked the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR) to withdraw its provisional measures for the Indigenous Indian community of Chinese Landing where residents there had alleged severe physical violence and environmental degradation by a number of gold miners, Minister of  Governance Gail Teixeira said Wednesday.

Minister Teixeira said government last December wrote to the IACHR asking for a response to the issues that the Guyana government had raised. “In fact, what we did with Chinese Landing; we asked for a withdrawal of the precautionary measures as they’re not based on fact and it’s a misrepresentation so we asked formally of  the IACHR to withdraw the petition against Guyana,” she said.

She told news conference that so far the IACHR has acknowledged the Guyana government’s submissions in response to the claims made by Chinese Landing residents, but has not indicated what the next steps are likely to be to its request for withdrawal. “We have submitted our responses to Chinese Landing. We’ve had an acknowledgement that they received it. We’ve not had a response in terms of what their views are,” she said.

No details about government’s response were provided but the minister described government’s findings on health and mining as “very interesting” based on work done by reputable technical officials of the government. “I didn’t want to get into a battle with the APA (Amerindian People’s Association) in the newspaper on documents we had submitted that were considered factual done by reputable members of the government in terms of their technical offices so I did not do that but if it goes on for a long time we will have to reconsider that,” she said.  Blood and urine tests for mercury had also been submitted to the IACHR, she said, adding that the Chinese Landing representatives had most likely received a copy of the submissions.

Ms Teixeira signaled that if the Commission does not respond definitively to its request to withdraw the provisional measures, the Guyana government would likely release its response to the provisional measures that sought to protect the community from serious human rights abuses.

The Chinese Landing council had asked that government allow the residents of the community to mine gold for their own livelihoods.

Government had shutdown all gold mining operations in the community and deployed police and Guyana Geology and Mines Commission representatives after the IACHR, an autonomous and primary body of the 34-nation Organisation of American States (OAS), issued  a resolution on July 21, 2023 stating that the Caribs “are in a serious and urgent situation, given that their rights to life and personal integrity are at serious risk.”

That body had asked the Guyana government to take the necessary measures to protect the rights to life and personal integrity of the members of the Indigenous Carib Community of Chinese Landing identified as beneficiaries, with a cultural, gender-based, and age-appropriate perspective to prevent threats, harassment, and other acts of violence against the beneficiaries; consult and agree upon the measures to be adopted with the beneficiaries and their representatives, and report on the actions taken to investigate the events that led to the adoption of this precautionary measure, so as to prevent such events from reoccurring.

She acknowledged that the process takes a long time because of the IACHR’s own workload and there are different stages for each petition coming from many countries in the Western Hemisphere.