Trafficking in Amerindian girls is not new
Editorial
Stabroek News
June 15, 2004
When President Bharrat Jagdeo met the Bartica business community last month, the public learnt of his administration's concern about people-trafficking.
The President disclosed that his administration had sought assistance from the United States administration on a law to deal with the trafficking of people in Guyana. He said that he had learnt that people were being held against their will and forced into prostitution in some mining camps and promised to ensure that "these places are raided and action taken to prosecute offenders." The President also said that he had learnt that "business places take people, especially Amerindian girls, to work and keep them in bondage where they cannot leave when they want to."
The impression may have been created in the public's mind that Brazilian miners were encouraging child labour and child prostitution. The public may have felt also that the problem of people-trafficking had arisen only recently and was confined to the hinterland.
Persons familiar with the problems plaguing Amerindian communities, however, would be aware that the exploitation of young girls is neither recent nor a Brazilian invention. It may seem odd, though, that the Minister of Amerindian Affairs had not pursued this complaint more vigorously and was not part of the team of Government of Guyana officials who met with the US Ambassador to examine the problem of people-trafficking. It is also odd that, nearly five years into his presidency, Mr Jagdeo has only now announced measures to tackle the problem.
In a report on the Pomeroon-Supenaam Region published over six years ago, evidence was produced to show that proprietors of rum shops, discos and hotels were recruiting girls as young as 14 years from Akawini, Moruka, St Monica's and elsewhere as 'waitresses.' These innocents were turned into sex slaves and forced by their unscrupulous employers to provide unprotected, and sometimes gratuitous, sexual services to their customers.
Girls were paid low wages, lived in substandard accommodation, and were simply sent back to their settlements when they became pregnant or too sick to work. The evidence suggests, too, that young women were taken to timber grants and mining camps and abused in a similar manner.
The Government of Guyana should be aware that nearly 55 years ago, UN General Assembly resolution 317(IV) of 1949 determined that "prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and endanger the welfare of the individual, the family and the community." Parties to the UN Convention agreed to "punish any person who, to gratify the passions of another, procures, entices or leads away, for purposes of prostitution, another person, even with the consent of that person, exploits the prostitution of another person, even with the consent of that person."
The present Guyanese attention to people-trafficking, however, seems not to have been activated by the long-standing local Amerindian problem but by the growing US interest in the security implications of the international scourge in the wake of the recent Anglo-American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of internally-displaced people, many left homeless after bombing, have been on the move creating problems for their neighbours and the developed countries. Trafficking in people, especially women and children, has therefore now become a major issue for the USA and its allies.
Director of the US Department of State's anti-people-trafficking office, described the trade in humans as a "modern-day form of slavery" and said that people-trafficking was an abuse of human rights that provided income for international criminal gangs. The US Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs also declared that "Traffickers have set up and solidified regional and global networks that include recruiters, transporters, buyers and sellers... Once established, trafficking networks and routes can be used for drug and arms trafficking and the movement of other illicit materials."
The Guyana administration's new concern about people-trafficking is most likely a response to prompting by the US Government to implement effective measures and to qualify for US anti-trafficking funds for law-enforcement training, education and assistance to victims. In a country which already enjoys international notoriety for what its citizens cheerfully call 'backtracking,' it is time to investigate the serious national threat of internal Amerindian people-trafficking before going international.