Govt says U. S. TIP report “riddled with inaccuracies”

The local ministerial task force on human trafficking said it is deeply concerned that the U. S. State Department report on the global scourge has not reviewed Guyana fairly and therefore attracts little merit on the part of the government of Guyana.
Government, in rejecting the report, said it is riddled with inaccuracies aimed at “sexing it” up. In a response to the U. S. report which was issued last month, the task force which is chaired by Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee said the report contains several inaccuracies and misrepresentations with regard to the scope of trafficking in persons in Guyana. It said too that the report ignores the efforts of the government of Guyana in combating trafficking in persons.

Task force
The task force said according to the media in November 2012, a child was murdered while working in the mines, and reports linked his death to his attempt to collect wages due to him.
“While the government of Guyana has established that the child was indeed sadly murdered, it is of the view that the U. S. report has not provided a shred of evidence to link the child’s death to the offence of trafficking in persons. We repudiate most emphatically the inclusion of this homicide case in the U. S. trafficking in persons report in order to ‘sex up’ the report,” the task force declared.
The U. S. report further states that: “Indonesian workers were subjected to forced labour on several Guyanese-flagged fishing boats off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago during the reporting period.”
The government of Guyana said it considers this claim as spurious since it falls completely outside the jurisdiction of Guyana. “The government of Guyana has no knowledge of this matter whatsoever and considers it a brazen attempt on the part of the U. S. State Department to resort to an extraterritorial issue in an effort to bring some degree of credence to a report that is riddled with fabrications.”
Further, by including this matter without providing information on it to the government of Guyana, the U. S. State Department has contravened an agreement between U. S. embassy officials and ministers of the task force to share information on trafficking in persons, the government said.
The U. S. report had also noted that “The government of Guyana does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.”
Adherence to UN protocol
In response, the Guyana government said it strictly adheres to and upholds the minimum standards of the United Nations Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children through its own “Combating Trafficking in Persons Act, Number Two of 2005”.
Guyana, as a sovereign nation, is not a signatory of the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act; consequently, is not required to follow that act.
Additionally, on the issue of governments failure to demonstrate evidence of increasing efforts to hold trafficking offenders accountable with jail time over the previous reporting period, the task force reiterated that it has told the U. S. government on numerous occasions that it has no control over the judiciary and the magistracy.
Further, the Director of Public Prosecutions’ (DPP) Chambers is a public office whose independence is preserved in the Constitution.
“The long established practice has been that the Guyana Police Force investigates and submits the case files to the DPP and the DPP in turn would advise on whether charges are to be laid or not or if the matter should be tried summarily.
“The decision to convict or not is one exclusively for the courts. The government of Guyana does not hold persons accountable with jail time, the court does. The tangible role for government is to ensure that the relevant legislation is in place and in this regard, it has passed a very comprehensive Trafficking in Persons Act.”
In response to another point in the U. S. report that “The government… reported the initiation of seven sex trafficking prosecutions. It was unclear if the one prosecution documented in the previous reporting period was included in this figure.”
The task force said as far as the government of Guyana is concerned each of the seven sex trafficking prosecutions that took place during the reporting period are reflected in the report. The one prosecution documented in the previous reporting period was not included.
Again, the U. S. report states: “The great majority of prosecutions initiated in other reporting periods were dismissed when the prosecutors were unable to proceed, usually because witnesses declined to testify.” “The government of Guyana is aware that it is not uncommon throughout the world for witnesses to decline to testify. Prospective witnesses cannot be forced to testify. Guyana is not unique in this respect. It is an individual’s right to be able to decide whether or not he/ she wants to testify in a court case,” the task force added.