Aftermath

Editorial
Stabroek News
January 16, 2000


Minister Rohee was right. The exchange between Guyana and Canada over the deportees who were deposited so unceremoniously here on December 3 was not a 'minor spat' as stated in our editorial of January 5. The high decibel tone of Guyana's Foreign Minister, and the apology from Minister Axworthy alone supply evidence of the inappropriateness of that description.

Now that Guyana has secured her apology in a matter that everyone agrees is serious, could the public be informed by the administration as to the exact sequence of events, and what precisely the Director of Civil Aviation (DCA) is guilty of that requires he be disciplined? At a press conference on Old Year's Day, Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon had indicated that the report on the investigation into the circumstances of the deportation would be made public the following week; to date this has not been done, and the local authorities are strangely coy about supplying details.

While the incident occurred on December 3, it did not come to the media's attention until the end of that month. The first reports said that Canadian immigration authorities had deported seven Guyanese aboard two chartered aircraft without documentation because they had lost patience waiting for the relevant documents from their Guyanese counterparts. In an invited comment published in this newspaper on December 28, Canadian High Commissioner Jacques Crete said that his country's authorities had consulted officials of the Guyana Consulate in Canada about the return of the seven deportees. This was confirmed subsequently in a press release from the Guyana Consulate General in Toronto, which also said that Guyana's High Commissioner had asked for more time to consult with the relevant authorities in Guyana, but that two days later, Immigration Canada had acted on their threats to return the seven individuals.

At his end-of-year press conference on December 30 Minister Rohee told the media that he had warned Ottawa "in the strongest possible language" that the Government would not tolerate such "unilateralism in international relations." He also disputed the Canadian High Commissioner's assertion that there had been inordinate delays in the issuing of documents to deportees on Guyana's part. The following day Dr Luncheon at his press briefing said that President Jagdeo was reviewing recommendations from a committee set up to investigate the return here of the deportees, and indicated that actions were likely following the probe.

Neither Minister Rohee, nor Dr Luncheon directly raised the question of violation of airspace at their public briefings, although the Minister was to claim in a press release of January 5, that that was what he was referring to when he talked about "unilateralism in international relations." Well it might have been what he meant, but it was not what he explicitly said, and to claim otherwise is to rewrite history. In the same release he averred that documentation was not the issue; violation of sovereignty was. Documentation was clearly not the primary issue, but it was an issue, and while it certainly does not excuse the Canadians, if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had sought to set up a joint committee to negotiate the question of deportees long ago, the whole crisis might possibly have been averted. That, however, is another story.

It was from the Chronicle that the public first learnt that the Guyana Government had in fact complained to the Canadians that the landing of the two jets here violated this country's sovereignty and constituted an incursion of airspace - although no attribution for this part of the story was given. In a subsequent edition of the same newspaper (January 12) 'sources' were quoted to say that false information had been provided in the "clandestine operation" by the Canadians, and the "aircraft headed here under the pretext that they were on in-transit flights." If true, it certainly does the Canadians no credit, but why wasn't the public told officially at an earlier stage?

It was this newspaper which uncovered the fact that Roraima Airways had acted as the agent for the Canadians, and that police and immigration officials had warning of the arrival of the deportees, and met them on the tarmac. Who advised them to meet the plane, one wonders? And why are they not to be disciplined? Dr Luncheon was quoted as saying that they had carried out their functions with "great fidelity." Did they not know there was a problem, even after the Canadians had threatened to deport the men when they met with Guyana's High Commissioner in Toronto? Did they not report to anyone after they processed the men? Could they have not asked through their minister for the Civil Aviation Department to detain the plane until the situation had been clarified? When did the Government find out that Immigration Canada had carried out its 'threat'? Why is the DCA to be disciplined if the Canadians submitted false information? Has there in fact been a breakdown of local systems in this instance?

Would Dr Luncheon do what he said he was going to do, and make the results of the investigation public?


A © page from:
Guyana: Land of Six Peoples