The Eteringbang killing
Editorial
Stabroek News
December 10, 2006
Last week Member of Parliament Raphael Trotman of the Alliance for Change tabled a question in Parliament asking whether measures had been put in place to strengthen border security in the wake of the killing of a Guyanese national in Guyana's territory by members of the Venezuelan army. The written response from Prime Minister Samuel Hinds was circulated at Thursday's sitting of the National Assembly and opened as follows: "Yes! Measures have been put in place within resources available to strengthen border security." It went on to say that the government had transmitted its deepest concern and dismay to the Venezuelan authorities. "We are expecting to receive a report from them," said the Prime Minister, "and we would be looking for arrangements which should mitigate against such an incident recurring."
It will be recalled that Mr Parasram Persaud was shot dead at Eteringbang in the Cuyuni River on October 6 by the regular Venezuelan armed forces after refusing to take the fuel he had been transporting along the river to the Venezuelan bank. It so happens - as we have reported on several occasions before - that the whole of the Cuyuni River as far as the Wenamu is Guyana territory where the Venezuelan army has no jurisdiction whatsoever, although even if that had not been the case there would still have been a major problem since neither Mr Parasram nor the man he was with seems to have been armed.
It has now been two months since Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro was said by Ambassador Odeen Ishmael to have promised to deliver a preliminary report on the shooting 'shortly.' Defence Minister General Raúl Baduel, however, was altogether less complaisant, declining to admit in a television interview that any killing had taken place at all, and simply saying that the soldiers had fired on "aggressive miners." In our report which appeared in Friday's edition it was said that the delay in a reply from the Venezuelans had been attributed (among other things) to the preparations for last Sunday's general election in the neighbouring country.
Whatever the reason for Venezuelan dilatoriness, it surely has nothing to do with preparations for an election; in no normal state do inquiries by the authorities grind to a halt because of an election campaign. In any case, the Venezuelan response to other recent cases involving the killing of miners by the army has been very different. On September 22, members of the Venezuelan military in a helicopter gunship opened fire on small miners involved in illegal mining in the La Paragua area at the headwaters of the Caroní River. Five of them, including two Brazilian nationals, were killed outright, and there was one severely injured survivor. President Chávez himself admitted an excessive use of force on the part of the army, and within days the matter had been placed in the hands of the civilian judicial authorities. It might be added that Brazil was quickly assured that justice would be done in the case.
On September 26, El Universal reported that on the instructions of the Attorney General a court had been constituted at the hospital where the survivor was being treated in Ciudad Bolívar, as part of criminal investigations into the incident. Subsequently, the National Assembly set up its own inquiry, and members travelled to Bolívar state to interview the military personnel involved. By the 28th of the month, El Universal was reporting that bench warrants had been served on 14 army officers, and around two weeks later the Attorney General was said to have indicted 10 members of the military for the murder of 6 miners.
The unlawful nature of the killings aside, there are of course key differences between the La Paragua and Eteringbang cases. The most important is that the first took place on Venezuelan soil in an area where there are acute tensions between artisanal miners and the authorities. The government is trying to implement a ban on mining in the headwaters of the Caroní River, mostly to preserve the integrity of the waters of the Gurí dam which supplies electricity not just to the Venezuelan grid, but also to north-eastern Brazil. There are thousands of small miners in the area who are reluctant to change occupation despite the re-training programmes being offered by the authorities. President Chávez, however, clearly did not want to be seen (especially before an election) to be employing strong-arm tactics against what under normal circumstances would be his own constituency. Violent protests on the part of the miners after the shootings may have helped to accelerate the response from Caracas, which would also have been concerned that two of the victims came from Brazil, a country which Miraflores is anxious to cultivate.
Contrast that with the Eteringbang case which took place unquestionably on Guyanese soil, but in an area which Venezuela wrongfully claims as hers. Even if the Venezuelan government were to officially acknowledge the unlawful killing, it is almost certain it would not concede that it happened within the jurisdiction of Guyana or that their soldiers were operating illegally on foreign terrain. Given Venezuela's silence on the border controversy in recent times, it is conceivable that Caracas would be reluctant to have the issue rear its head indirectly as a consequence of an incident which it regards as minor.
After a hawkish stance in relation to the boundary for his first few years in office, President Chavez subsequently changed tack, advocating a Georgetown-Venezuela road, which would allow him to acquire a sphere of influence in our North-West without attracting any opprobrium as an aggressor in the process.
(As an incidental point, he surely would not want the Brazil-Guyana road with its associated deep-water harbour to go ahead giving our southern neighbour unparalleled influence here, unless he secured an equivalent agreement for an artery linking his country with Georgetown.)
While President Chavez might not be anxious to stir the frontier pot unnecessarily at this point, he probably does not think he has to take too much notice of this country either; we are simply in an entirely different bracket from Brazil. After all, the Guyana Government is a supplicant, appealing to Caracas to adjust the terms of the PetroCaribe deal so it will meet IMF conditionalities and requesting the cancellation of debt owed by this nation to Venezuela. And when President Jagdeo himself inexplicably sat down with a low-level Venezuelan delegation in Georgetown on October 10, he promised Guyana would vote for their country in the UN Security Council contest. Venezuela, it seems, had to offer nothing in return.
Miraflores will probably calculate, therefore, that it doesn't have to rush to formally respond to Guyana, if it needs to respond at that level at all. If an official reply to the Guyanese authorities is forthcoming, it is possible that it will not be very satisfactory from our point of view. In the meantime, however, Parliament has to be assured that whatever measures have been put in place in the Cuyuni in the wake of Mr Parasram's killing, they are sufficient to ensure that we have full control of the river and that the Venezuelan army cannot launch its boats there with impunity, and most important is in no position to intimidate - let alone shoot at - our citizens in our territorial space. Perhaps Mr Trotman could ask the Prime Minister a more detailed follow-up question requesting more specifics about the situation in that border sector.