DIMENSIONS TO DEPORTEES MOU
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
February 8, 2004
THE Memorandum of Understanding signed on Friday between Foreign Minister Rudy Insanally and US Ambassador to Guyana Roland Bullen, would have served to do more than emphasise the good relations that exist between the two countries.
It has also laid the foundation for a more focused and appropriate method by both countries to deal with a very sensitive social issue of the deportation from the USA of Guyana-born citizens convicted of various crimes in that country.
The issue of Caribbean citizens being sent back, at times in significant batches, to their respective homelands by the USA and, to a lesser extent, Canada and the United Kingdom, have long been a source of deep concern by member states of the Caribbean Community.
From Jamaica and The Bahamas in the northern Caribbean, to Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana in the southern region, as well as in Barbados and other Eastern Caribbean states, there have repeatedly been official claims of a direct connection between escalating serious crimes, with the use of sophisticated weapons, and the criminal deportees.
Jamaica and Guyana have been the worse affected by the haste with which the USA, in particular, has often deported, in the past, unwanted criminal elements. Among them have been Caribbean nationals who have lived for many years in America and claimed to have been victims of discrimination and denial of justice.
In the case of Jamaica which, like Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, has been the worse affected by murders and serious crimes among CARICOM states within recent years, there has been some 20,242 deported Jamaican nationals over a 10-year-period ending in 2002.
Disturbing levels
Exact number for Guyana over the same period was not readily available, but it had reached very disturbing levels within recent years with more than 500 in 2003.
Actual statistics would be helpful in an objective assessment, but the police have often cited a relationship between the criminal upsurge and daring armed criminals in possession of sophisticated weapons and communication equipment.
But there is another dimension to the problem of Guyanese criminal deportees which also concerns other CARICOM member states affected by the phenomenon:
It is the argument that small and disadvantaged economies in this region are being increasingly required by North America and Europe to spend more and more of their scarce human and financial capital in battling narco-trafficking, money laundering, the gun-running trade and, more recently, countering terrorism, while having to cope with deportees who are being dumped on their doorsteps following crimes committed in the metropolitan centres.
In the circumstances, the overdue MOU signed between Guyana and the USA on Friday is of particular significance at a period of unsettling criminal activities, the need for observance of due process, the rights of all individuals, including the deportees, and for continuing good relations and mutual respect between sovereign states.