THE embassies of Canada, the UK, and the EU treat Guyanese with contemptuous dismissal when persons use their offices to apply for various categories of visas.
The latest example of this is a letter in the newspapers yesterday written by someone who signs her name as Juanita Gomes.
I doubt Ms. Gomes is the real signature because people live in agonizing trepidation of the Western embassies out of fear that if they publicly speak out they will be victimized. I have been doing columns for 35 years, so I am in receipt of this fear 35 years ago and right into 2023. Please see my column of fear of visa retaliation for Saturday October 7, 2023 titled, “Visa horrors as told by the New York Times.”

If Ms. Gomes is the real signature below that letter, then we should admire her courage. Ms.Gomes complained about mistreatment she received recently at the VFS Global Office, a private company that processes visa applications for the British and Canadian missions here in Georgetown. For Ms. Gomes’ benefit, I am listing here my columns of visa mistreatment. She can Google them.

1- Tuesday, September 20, 2022, “The British High Commission in Guyana must be more respectful.”
2- Wednesday, September 21, 2022, “The President needs to know about the Canadian visa.”
3- Thursday, September 22, 2022, “What British High Commissioner told Timothy Tucker is wrong.”
4- Friday, September 23, 2022 “People live in mortal fear of the US, UK, Canadian diplomats in Guyana.”
5- Tuesday, October 11, 2022, “The visa delivery service of the UK, Canada and other embassies in Guyana.”
6- Thursday, November 10, 2022, “For three years the US Embassy in Guyana did not exist.”
7- Wednesday, December 14, 2022, “Visa free travel: A nation’s psychological mess.”

These are eight columns on visas, and as readers can see the complaint about the attitude of VFS-Global and the British High Commission was September last year. In October, one year after my publications, Ms. Gomes complains about VFS-Global. What is the conclusion to be drawn?
Before I answer that, readers need to know that the US Embassy opened a service for visa processing right opposite the VFS-Global service for the British High Commission on Cummings Street, where in my September column, 2022, I spoke about the inappropriate location. Now Ms. Gomes speaks about the location of VFS-Global for the Canadian High Commission.
So what is the conclusion? The contempt for small countries by these influential western powers. Read one of the columns listed above about what the current British High Commissioner told one of Guyana’s most influential business administrators at the time. Would she have reacted like that if she was approached by an Israeli or Ukrainian person residing in Guyana who wanted to enquire why VFS-Global was holding up his British visa?

Why do these countries get away with this contempt? For three reasons. One is that there is no civil society in Guyana. All that exists of civil society in Guyana is made up of people that look under their bed when they wake up to see if the PPP Government is under it. All civil society does in Guyana is to concentrate on even the most inconsequential thing about the Government of Guyana.

Secondly, all of Guyanese society, (really ALL) suck up to these embassy officials, thereby reducing their dignity as Guyanese and as humans. I see people of worth and value in this country with huge wealth that can take them marketable anywhere in this world, happy to be servile to these diplomats. One very rich Guyanese woman was so smothered by an ordinary European diplomat in Guyana that she married him.
Thirdly, fear is the key. Journalists, editors and other actors do not want to write on the visa mistreatment because they fear they will be rejected when next they apply. Enter the Stabroek News. Last year, after just six months in Guyana, the EU Ambassador, Mr. Van Ness bestowed on the editor-in-chief, of the Stabroek News, Mr. Anand Persaud, the EU’s Human Rights Award.

I am not going to extend any analysis of this occurrence, but suffice it to say the Stabroek News has never done an editorial on visa mistreatment. Of course, to be honest, no newspaper or online media house has touched the subject and you know why. Ms. Gomes needs to be corrected in her observation that Canada has abolished the visa requirement for the Easter Caribbean nations of CARICOM.

What Canada did was arrogant and insulting. You can travel visa free from these islands to Canada only if you have an American visa. So if your relatives are in Canada and you have no interest in going to the US, you cannot travel visa-free to Canada. The insult continues.