The week before last the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, normally referred to by its initials, IACHR, issued a resolution on a petition from the Indigenous residents of Chinese Landing in Region One. This petition had requested that the Commission require Guyana to take measures which would protect their rights to health, personal integrity and life because these were at risk on account of their opposition to the mining being carried out on their lands, and the environmental impact it was having on them.
The IACHR is an autonomous body of the OAS, which is mandated to promote the observance and defence of human rights in the region, and its resolution deemed the Caribs of Chinese Landing as being “currently at serious, urgent risk of suffering irreparable harm to their human rights.” As such it asked Guyana to take precautionary measures to protect them.
Chinese Landing obtained title to its lands in 1976, and this title was reissued in 1991 under the State Lands Act, while a certificate of title was provided in 2018 under the Land Registry Act. Its residents have also traditionally engaged in mining alongside their normal subsistence activities. Currently mining is concentrated in the Tassawini area, in the centre of village titled lands. According to the government, the Chinese Landing Village Council entered into a ten-year agreement with miner Mr Wayne Vieira in 1998, but in 2004, the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs wrote to the GGMC that the Council no longer wished to continue any arrangement with Mr Vieira. His permit was renewed nonetheless and three years later the Minister indicated that this was a breach of good faith since in the case of medium-scale mining the Amerindian Act of 2006 required the village to first give its consent.
In the absence of such consent, the GGMC issued Mr Vieira with a Cease Work Order in 2010, and as a consequence the miner took to the courts. The matter went all the way to the CCJ which found that the GGMC could not apply a regulation made under the Mines Act to the Amerindian Act. That was in 2017, and represented a real setback for the villagers. However, in 2021 they took their case against both Mr Vieira and the GGMC to the High Court, which dismissed the matter without sending it to trial on the basis that all minerals in the community’s lands were vested in the State and therefore Mr Vieira did not need the permission of Chinese Landing to mine the lands covered in his permits.
This must have been a perplexing decision for the residents, since although it is true that the State holds all sub-soil rights on indigenous lands, as mentioned above, the 2006 Amerindian Act (Section 48) is quite clear that in the case of small and medium-scale mining a prospective miner has to obtain the consent of at least two-thirds of a Village Council for any deal to go ahead. The community has appealed, but given the number of cases in the queue to be heard, they cannot be optimistic they will get a hearing any time soon. In the meantime the government has been sheltering behind a matter they regard as sub judice, and has told the IACHR that given the legal position, Mr Vieira had “exclusive right to occupy and mine gold and precious stones.” This goes entirely against the IACHR’s position on the question of mining on indigenous lands which stipulates “free and informed prior consent.”
But even while the government is taking cover under the 2021 High Court decision in relation to Mr Vieira’s right to mine in Tassawini, there are a whole host of other things unaffected by that decision which it has not addressed, despite the complaints. The community told the IACHR in its petition that between 2017 and 2021 the mining area lost 264 hectares of forest, five times what was destroyed between 2012 and 2016. So much for carbon credit schemes. In addition to the environmental degradation, which is horrendous, and which this newspaper reported on last year after going into Chinese Landing, there is the degradation of water sources. The Huri Creek, the main source of water for the village is no longer usable most of the time, and the Barama River can’t be utilised now for drinking either, and gives some people rashes, diarrhoea and vomiting. The great fear, of course, is mercury poisoning, as mercury is used in the amalgamation process to recover gold.
After the IACHR’s initial report last year, it had asked for a response from the government, which was provided on 17th April this year, with some additions in May. In August 2022 the government did send in the GGMC and the Environmental Protection Agency, but the villagers said that the miners appeared “to have advance notice of government team inspections, allowing them time to conceal unregistered equipment.” The EPA allegedly informed them that they did not take water samples from Huri Creek to test for mercury or other pollutants because they did not come prepared with equipment for water testing.
However some of the worst allegations relate to the terrorisation of villagers by the miners, which has been reported on in the local press, but which the government has not seen fit to address. The miners are armed and residents are threatened, harassed and abused, a problem which has increased since the 2021 decision. It is not just the miners who have been guilty of intimidatory behaviour, but also the police, acting in support of the miners. This raises the question as to whether segments of the force are operating in the pay of the miners, a problem which is not without precedent in this country.
The list of the most egregious incidents has been well publicised, and the government’s response as reflected in a press statement issued on Friday has been that many of the allegations were not reported to the relevant local authorities, and consequently there were “no records to inform legal proceedings against alleged perpetrators.” Some people, said the release, refused to give statements, some denied the occurrences and others no longer lived in Chinese Landing and could not be located. Joint Patrol teams had been deployed, it said, while the findings of several meetings with residents and investigations showing improved water quality through turbidity testing had been forwarded to IACHR.
One can only observe that bullied villagers who believe the police are involved are hardly likely to admit their experiences to members of the GPF for fear of further intimidation or threats. And in relation to those who no longer live in Chinese Landing, this probably refers to one man who was forcibly evicted from his home. It is difficult to believe that he cannot be found with a little effort. And if the police have no reports on file, that would hardly be surprising either.
The government continues its excuse for what has happened and has said its efforts to address the issues dated back as far as 2006, but their interventions “were nullified repeatedly by the several rulings of the court.” It can only be repeated that environmental issues and the unacceptable actions of the miners and probably the police too, have nothing to do with court rulings. In any event, the statement said that “all good-faith efforts will be made to ensure that the State is in compliance with the precautionary measures issued by the IACHR.”
As we reported yesterday, this involves assembling a new multisectoral fact-finding team to evaluate further the social and environmental issues which need to be addressed. It will report directly to a high-level committee being coordinated by the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance.
Following the mission’s report, representatives of the Chinese Landing Village Council, miners and relevant agencies will be invited to talks about finding “mutually beneficial and amicable measures”
which can be adopted for the protection of the human rights of all concerned. A formal reply would then be submitted to IACHR informed by the mission findings and other investigations. In addition it is proposed to work with the community to develop a permanent monitoring mechanism to report on issues which could constitute threats. These would be recorded and acted on in timely fashion. Finally, further scientific studies would be undertaken on environmental impacts.
There is no indication here that the government intends to review the actions of the police, and read the riot act there, and unless that is done, the monitoring mechanism will not function as intended and they will continue to work with the miners, especially if they are being paid as a private security force. In addition it is difficult to see the miners suddenly becoming docile, particularly as the government presumably intends to leave them with their weapons. In the end, the miners have to go if the community does not want them there, and that it appears, requires a court decision. That said, if the government finds itself in an embarrassing situation now, it has only itself to blame. It had better start taking Amerindian human rights more seriously.
