Dear Editor,
SOMETHING strange happened at New York’s JFK airport on the 11th July 2024. Vickram Bharrat, Guyana’s Minister of Natural Resources arrived to visit his father who is hospitalised and ailing. Minister Bharrat was visiting in a private capacity; however, he was travelling on a diplomatic passport.
The minister did not request protocol, no request was made by any official in Guyana and yet, Bharrat was met by American officials and a Caribbean Airlines employee who informed him that the airline had made arrangements to expedite his processing in light of his status and family emergency.

Guyana’s minister was escorted by a group of three persons, two men and the CAL employee as mentioned earlier. During the walk through the JFK labyrinth, one of the officials engaged in seemingly innocuous small talk about Guyana’s prosperity and progress and then made a comment about the sanctions on the Mohamed family. The minister responded that our government was handling it (information in the public domain) and the conversation moved on seamlessly; there was no detention and/or interrogation.

Vickram Bharrat was indeed processed expeditiously and headed to his father’s hospital bedside. This entire incident would not have merited retelling by the minister had he not emerged from the cocoon of the hospital to find that Enrico Woolford, a veteran Guyanese journalist had made a statement on social media to the effect that he (Vickram Bharrat) had been detained and interrogated by federal officials at JFK.

Then another extremely unusual thing happened. A video made by the CAL employee, of Bharrat walking with the US officials surfaced on the Facebook page of Melly Mel (a Guyanese influencer). This is the incident in the fullest detail I could ascertain and it raises a few questions that require answers from the US State Department and Department of Justice.
1.By what means and channels did a CAL off-duty stewardess arrange for a passenger to be expedited?

2.Who were the officials who facilitated the expedited processing?
3. Were they normal protocol officers or were they from another agency?
4.Was the ‘small talk’ an official attempt to breach the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic immunity and if so, who authorised it?

5.Why was a CAL off-duty stewardess allowed to video within the corridors of JFK and freely disseminate the video? JFK rules are clear. Filming for commercial purposes (including journalists, reporters, and other professionals) is permitted only with prior written consent from JFKIAT management. Photographing in Customs and Border Protection areas and the TSA Screening Checkpoints, filming airport personnel and Port Authority Police is prohibited at all times.)

6.Was this entire incident designed by any public agency or official/s to cause embarrassment to the Government of Guyana?
7.If all of this is just happenstance, apologies are owed to Minister Bharrat and the Government of Guyana.
Editor, it is here that I will venture into conjecture (not conclusions) and will ask for some leeway.

There is a well-publicised nexus with Rickford Burke (a Guyanese-American), Letitia James (Attorney General of New York) and Congressman Hakeem Jefferies. In the recent past, Letitia James vowed to rally the support of other Democratic Attorney Generals in America to bring pressure to bear on Guyana for purported discrimination by the PPP government (after listening to Ganesh Mahipaul and Paul Slowe), a clear declaration of her intentions.

Hakeem Jefferies who protested to Obama about the Ramotar administration in 2015 and, then infamously sided with the APNU+AFC during their attempt to steal the 2020 elections. “Why in the world is the US Government engaging in foreign interference in the affairs of an independent nation in Guyana? It’s outrageous,” and, when visas were revoked as part of the Trump administration’s pressure on the Granger-led APNU+AFC in June 2020. “We can monitor how democracy is playing itself out in different parts of the world, but to interfere in such an extraordinary way and in a manner that appears to favour one party, the opposition party, potentially to the detriment of the ruling party, is deeply troubling to a lot of us in Washington DC…” it is not a stretch to see either of these two being pressured into action by Burke.

If either of these officials were involved in this ludicrous mini-plot to embarrass Guyana’s Minister of Natural Resources by way of pressuring any US agency to act and allow others to act in contravention of the Vienna Convention it would constitute a clear case of malfeasance and that is punishable under US law.
The New York duo may escape major scrutiny now as US national elections are in full flow, but rest assured that this issue would be investigated fully by the next White House administration (Republican or Democrat) as Guyana’s hemispherical importance is growing rapidly.

As an interesting side note, the prosecution of President Trump by Letitia James in her failed attempt to discredit him, mirrors the APNU+AFC attempt to prosecute Irfaan Ali in the run-up to the 2020 election; plays from the perennial failures playbook as they are forever afraid to face anyone on equal terms. It backfired in Guyana as it did in New York and so has this latest bit of clumsy shenanigans at JFK, as Confucius advised, “Seek revenge, and you should dig two graves, one for yourself”

Sincerely,
Robin Singh