…will raise issue with US President and at Summit of the Americas
President Bharrat Jagdeo, while alluding to the most recent Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report by the US State Department which places Guyana on Tier 2, signalled his intention to write to United States President Barack Obama and ask him to review the process of constructing the reports since they are misleading and lecture the world rather than help.

He also stated that he might raise the issue at the Summit of the Americas which will be held in Trinidad and Tobago in April.

The President was at the time delivering the feature address at the opening of the 3rd meeting of the African Caribbean and Pacific and the European Union (ACP-EU) Joint Parliamentary Assembly Wednesday at the Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC).

The Head of State said that on numerous occasions in Europe there were talks about human rights conditionalities being attached to trade and aid. He added that while he has no problem with Guyana being assessed by the developed world on certain issues, the problem has to do with who does the assessment.

Referring to the TIP report, President Jagdeo said that it takes 100 documented cases to place a country on the Human Trafficking Tier in the US State Department report; but in Guyana’s case, only two documented cases were produced.

The Guyanese leader said he went to Washington and met with the responsible individuals and has asked the United States Embassy here to publish the cases.

According to President Jagdeo, “We were placed in the worst category and we run the risk of being sanctioned and having our aid cut from the United States because of capricious actions on the part of officials. The United States of America, just a few days ago, I saw they rescued quite a number of children prostitutes and we have a small country where we can easily find out…if we had children being prostituted.”

Though this is a huge problem in the US, Guyana is being lectured to by that country and unfortunately the European Union may use the same human trafficking report done by the US or the State Department report on some other issues, the President said.

Guyana’s constitution stipulates that persons can only be held for 72 hours and if no charge is instituted they have to be released; while in the U.S and the U.K a person can be detained for up to 41 days without being charged. “You had 600-odd people at Guantanamo without access to lawyers; … and no one lectures the U.S on these issues,” he added.

According to the Head of State, many of the Northern Non-Governmental Organisations give a huge ‘write up’ if there they think that someone has been in a prison for too long in another country without access to a lawyer, as opposed to the U.S where only a small paragraph was written about the prisoners in Guantanamo.

Referring to the Heritage Foundation, the President said that Guyana always had a problem with the surveys done by people who came in the country only for a few days. He further urged countries to resist using human rights conditions as a conditionality to aid, unless there is an independent and transparent way of measuring these issues.