IF anyone thinks that the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) and other anti-government civil society groups would not have to add their “two cents” on the Adriana Younge’s drowning death, then they don’t know Guyana.
Transparency Institute Guyana Chapter (TIGC) has joined the chorus and if you have been around a long time in social activism, you could easily have predicted what they would have chosen to leave out.
Before we look at the omissions of TIGC and GHRA in the Younge tragedy, a word about my conversation yesterday (Wednesday) morning with the Younge’s family doctor, Dr. Caleb Mc Cloggen. I approached the doctor because Mikhail Rodrigues had said that there was a distancing between the family and the doctor.

I asked him about that but his position is that he will speak his mind after the conclusion of the case; no doubt he means toxicology reports and the forensic/detective investigation. A few other words that are important I am not allowed to print. Dr Caleb had no objection to being quoted as saying that the post-mortem on the body of Adriana Younge was the most meticulous, he had ever seen.

Enter the GHRA. This organisation has issued a press release (this is all it does – issue press releases) and there is absolutely no mention of the fine experts with impressive medical achievements that did the autopsy. This is the same GHRA that insisted that Guyana bring in an Argentine foreign forensic expert in the investigation of the murder of the two cousins at Cotton Tree in Region 5.
Nowhere in the press release is there any mention of the top pathologists that performed the autopsy. As to be expected, the GHRA joined the bandwagon of using the tragic death of this young girl to crusade against the government. The bulk of the press release reads like the public denouncement of the government on the Younge’s tragedy.

In its customary insane anti-government ramblings, the GHRA noted that the inferno on the Monday of the post-mortem results was driven by lack of trust in the police and the government. There is no mention of the politicisation of the tragedy that contributed to the Monday night mayhem. Here, laid bare for all to see, is the hypocrisy of civil society.

Here are the words of UG lecturer and former CARICOM legal adviser, Neville Bissember who by no stretch of the imagination is a government supporter. He wrote the following in last Sunday’s Sabroek News : “These issues do not extend to the antics of opportunists and attention-grabbers eager to sensationalise a personal tragedy as a rallying cause for their narrow personal (or even political) gain.” The only people who don’t know this are those in the GHRA.
Enter TIGC. Here are the words of TIGC on the need for an international investigation of the Adriana Younge’s death: “The investigation is to determine her disappearance from the poolside at the Double Day International Hotel whilst alive and the reappearance of her dead body in the swimming pool many hours later. There is video evidence from the surface of the pool later that day that her body was not seen”

There is no evidence to date that the girl’s dead body was placed in the pool. This is what the investigation is all about – was she killed then placed in the pool or did she drown and her body was not properly searched for. The video TIGC is referring to is taken by Mikhail Rodrigues AKA Guyanese Critic. He admitted that he took the video with a cell phone at 10.30 PM.

Rodriques further admitted that there were sections of the pool that were murky. He also admitted that he publicly said there wasn’t a body in the pool because he believed the grandmother who said that. These are materials in the public domain, yet TIGC has joined in the politicisation of this tragedy. TIGC has now concluded that she was murdered and put in the pool.

There have been so many occasions where certain civil society groups have been exposed for being anti-government rather than independent monitors of the contents of civil society. The undisputed, guilty culprit in this regard is the GHRA in September 2020 in Cotton Tree, in relation to the death of two teenage cousins.

The GHRA ran with the opposition propaganda that the boys were murdered by rejoicing PPP supporters after the PPP was declared the victor in August of the 2020 election. In my 58 years of political and social activism, I never heard something as dangerously asinine as that. The Adriana Younge’s tragedy is being used, as Mr. Bissember reminds us, for personal and political gains. This in itself is a tragedy.