RIGHTS-GUYANA: Let the Prisoners Go Free Says UN Body

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Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, May 20 1998 (IPS) - When late President Cheddi Jagan ordered Guyana to be a signatory to the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1993, little did he or his legal advisors envisage that it would come back to haunt the country in less than five years.

Against a background of his lack of faith in the local judiciary system and anxious to allow Guyanese an external avenue to which they could appeal acts of perceived human rights abuses, Jagan signed the Optional Protocol saying it was the thing any decent government would do.

Now, the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) has recommended that two Death Row prisoners who in 1996 had filed the first complaint to the body, not only be spared from death but also be released from prison after 10 years in cells adjoining the death chamber.

Attorneys for Abdool Saleem Yasseen and Noel Thomas got far more than they had bargained for. What they wanted was for the death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment. They hardly expected a recommendation for their clients to be set free.

The two had been convicted back in 1987 for the shooting death of Saleem’s younger brother Kaleem in a bitter family dispute.

To say that the recommendation has stunned authorities is to understate the level of surprise in legal circles, observers say. Even Khemraj Ramjattan, Thomas’s attorney has communicated his outrage to the media here, saying the body has simply gone too far in its recommendation this time.

“The decision is strange and it will open the floodgates for all convicted prisoners on death row to appeal along similar lines, ” said Ramjattan, also a ruling party Member of Parliament.

But an ecstatic Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) sees it differently from people like Ramjattan, noting that all eyes will be on government to see how it reacts to a body it was so anxious to join after coming to power in 1992.

“It is a challenge to the government in terms of its international commitment to upholding its international responsibility which it took when it ratified the Optional Protocol,” said Mike McCormack, the association’s Co-President.

“If the government does not accept the verdict of the UN, it is a sign that it does not accept the procedure. This is a test of the seriousness of its commitment.”

The GHRA has long campaigned against the death penalty, calling it inhumane. Several times it has invoked the ruling of the British Privy Council about five years ago in a Jamaican murder appeal, saying that prisoners held on death row for more than five years should not be executed as they would already have endured enough mental anguish.

Guyanese authorities have used the death penalty quite selectively. For example prisoners convicted of crimes of passion have not been hanged in recent years. Instead, authorities have kept the rope dangling mainly for those who rob and shoot to death their victims, for instance.

The UN Committee says it is expecting the government to communicate its reaction or decision within 90 days.

Prime Minister Sam Hinds says officials have to study the recommendation before reacting. Observers say however, that the authorities may just go ahead and hang the two men quickly to avoid several similar appeals from many of the more than 25 men now on death row.

The UNHRC’s recommendation has also sparked suggestions that Guyana should begin preparing to follow Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago’s example in trying to opt out of the “Optional Protocol” and avoid being held morally responsible to decisions from Geneva.

Jamaica, earlier this year, withdrew its membership from the United Nations Committee on Human Rights in order to deal with delays in carrying out the death penalty.

Then Trinidad and Tobago’s Attorney General, Ramesh Maharaj also announced that that country was contemplating withdrawing from the UN Committee and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in an attempt to expedite the execution of Death Row prisoners.

“It would be a wrong policy conclusion after the very first decision of the human rights committee has been handed down to panic or jump ship. That would be to sell Guyana and Guyanese short. The handing down of the decision is an occasion for calm and dispassionate reflection,” the GHRA said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the London-based International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights has outlined a litany of woes in its backing of the recommendation.

It spoke about the fact that the men were being held on death row for 10 years, that death warrants were actually read to them in 1996, a date had been set for their execution, allegations that police withheld key documents important to their trial and also complaints that part of Yasseen’s trial had proceeded for several days without an attorney.

“The committee found that the aggregate of those violations was enough to warrant release,” said the Centre.