Guyana’s true ethnic minorities are the Amerindians or indigenous peoples, Portuguese and Chinese. Both the Afro and Indo-Guyanese comprise the dominant sector of our society by virtue of their population figures which are far way greater than the other ethnicities. Furthermore their position of strength is evidenced by their occupation of the political power structures of our country. Any school child in Guyana knows this.

The reference to Afro-Guyanese as an ethnic minority in the Gay MacDougall Report is therefore mind-boggling, and at the same time it is unacceptable within Guyana’s ethnic make up or demographics. Also this reference runs counter to the United Nations Human Rights bodies on interpretation of minorities in a multi-ethnic country.

The UN Human Rights bodies recognised indigenous peoples as ethnic minorities in their respective countries and in 1970 with the formation of the sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities waged a vigorous campaign to secure international attention on the rights of indigenous peoples. This campaign was successful with the historic approval of the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Other achievements included the International Year of Indigenous Peoples in 1993 and the International Decade of the word’s Indigenous people from 1995 – 2004 which were all approved by the UN General Assembly.

However, notwithstanding the UN’s interpretation of indigenous peoples as an ethnic minority, the Gay McDougall Report did not address the situation of Guyana’s ethnic minorities, particularly the ethnic indigenous minority. This is totally a demonstration of gross disrespect to Guyana’s indigenous peoples or Amerindians, including the Portuguese and Chinese.

In this regard, the McDougall Report can be viewed more as a disservice to the United Nations and Guyana’s ethnic minorities. And even more succinctly, the Gay McDougall assignment in Guyana was a disaster.

While the Amerindian Action Movement of Guyana firmly believes in ethnic harmony in Guyana, it is unable to rationalise the placement of Afro-Guyanese into Guyana’s ethnic minority classification and moreso their claims in the McDougall Report which are similar to the political opposition.

But even if the UN expert on minorities places Afro-Guyanese into a ‘national minority’ classification which was used as a justification for only addressing the ‘concerns’ of Afro-Guyanese then it means that those ‘concerns and claims’ in the McDougall Report would have required a national response in the determination of the merits or demerits of such ‘claims or concerns’, where the Guyanese people would be required to make their voices heard. Unfortunately, this did not happen which makes the McDougal Report a distasteful one to all right-thinking Guyanese.

Further, the identification and selection of the author of the report are not worthy in terms of good process designing in ethnic relations work where a person of a different ethnic background should have been given the assignment where in the final analysis Guyana would have benefitted in terms of social cohesion and its promotion.
PETER PERSAUD
President
TAAMOG