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The Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (GCID) in a blistering statement expressed concern over the United States “silence on the [People’s Progressive Party/Civic] PPP regime’s war on the African Guyanese population.”
The organisation stated February is the month Americans celebrate Black History and in this modern era “as Americans celebrate the contribution of African Americans to the development of the United States, a racist, repressive, apartheid government has raised its ugly head in Guyana, in America’s backyard.”
According to CGID the “PPP regime is the most racist and brutally oppressive anti-black government in the Western Hemisphere.”
The organisation has accused the Irfaan Ali government of behaving “like Guyana is a PPP cotton plantation, and African Guyanese are their slaves.”
The regime deliberately deprives black communities from economic prosperity and development and is systematically dispossessing Blacks of their lands while conducting a war on the Black population, charged CGID.
There have been numerous allegations that the government is discriminating against African Guyanese in the allocation of contracts, job opportunities, respect for the right to join a trade union of choice and engage in collective bargaining.
CGID commissioned and published a study on contracts award. According to the body “Ninety percent (90%) of all government contracts, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, go to East Indian supporters of the regime. This is a wholesale, fraudulent transfer of Guyana’s wealth to themselves and their ethnic supporters.”
Attorney-at-law, Mr. Nigel Hughes has delivered a detailed presentation titled ‘Economy and Justice in Guyana’ to the International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly- Guyana (IDPADA-G) data showing African Guyanese disproportionately awarded contracts compared to Indians Guyanese.
African Guyanese comprise more than 35 per cent of the population but get less than 5 per cent in contracts, and in some instances where they do get contracts are as a result of partnering with Indian Guyanese.
In the public service, teaching and bauxite sectors where African Guyanese workers are the majority, the government has failed to engage in collective bargaining with the trade unions. Last year the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) took the government to court requesting the court direct the government to respect collective bargaining as guaranteed in Article 147 of the Constitution of Guyana. The case has not yet come up for hearing.
The opposition, A Partnership of National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC), has also accused the government of discriminatory allocation of resources and revenues in regions, neighbourhood democratic councils, towns and communities where the government does not have a political majority.
CGID accused the government of using the Guyana Police Force like a Jim Crow Force to oppress Black rights and enforce its segregationist politics and Afro-American second citizenship. Jim Crow was a practice in the USA, via laws and policies, particularly in the South that resulted in the segregation. Such laws saw blacks excluded from public schools, denied access to certain public facilities, denied certain jobs, and killed. In this instance, CGID is accusing the government of implementing an “East Indian ethnic supremacy and dominance in Guyana.”
CGID is also accusing the government of taking control of the country’s wealth and oil and gas revenue and redirecting same solely for the benefit of their supporters.
“There is a pervasive view, that the PPP regime’s subjugation of African Guyanese as well as its blatantly racist policies and practices are engendering a civil war in Guyana, and can put Guyana on the trajectory of Sudan,” warned the organisation.
The New York-based organisation said “it is disgraceful that this bigoted, anti-African, apartheid regime operates in the Hemisphere without sanctions from the Biden Administration, and that the US Embassy in Guyana seems to countenance the PPP regime’s racism and subjugation of African Guyanese.”
The silence of the US Embassy and the State Department creates an impression of complicity by the Executive Leadership at the Embassy, the organisation charged, stating that it is time for a drastic change in US policy on Guyana and also time for change of the Executive Leadership of the US Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana.
CGID has reiterated its call for US Ambassador to Guyana, Sarah Ann Lynch, to be replaced and has called on the New York Congressional Delegation, particularly US Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, to discuss the Guyana situation with the Biden Administration.
Moreover, CGID said, the organisation is calling on Senator Schumer to explain to his Guyanese American constituents, the status of the nomination of the new Ambassador designate to Guyana, whose nomination was announced in 2021.
