Guyana asks Canada's help

[Guest guest]

Guyana asks Canada's help to investigate slayings

Agriculture minister and two siblings, all Canadians, gunned down near

capital

 

MARINA JIMÉNEZ

 

With a report from Associated Press

 

Guyana is calling on Canada to help investigate the vicious murders of

the country's agricultural minister and two of his siblings -- all

Canadian citizens who were gunned down this weekend in what Guyanese

officials say was an attempt to destabilize the country before the

impending election.

 

President Bharrat Jagdeo will formally request help from Canadian

authorities to investigate the assassinations of agricultural minister

Satyadeow Sawh and his sister, Phulmattie Persaud, and brother, Rajpat

Sawh, who were both visiting from Toronto to commemorate the first

anniversary of the death of their mother.

 

"We will request technical help for our local law-enforcement

authorities in terms of investigating the crime scene and forensics,"

Robert Persaud, a government spokesman, told The Globe and Mail in a

telephone interview from Georgetown. "We anticipate the help will be

forthcoming not only because we are friendly governments, but because

they [the dead] are Canadian citizens."

 

Mr. Sawh, 50, was relaxing in a hammock on the verandah of his home in

the outskirts of Georgetown at 12:30 a.m. Saturday after an evening

out when seven armed men, dressed in black camouflage and carrying

rifles, killed a security guard, jumped a fence into the compound, and

shot Mr. Sawh's dog and then the government minister in the buttocks

as he tried to flee into his house.

 

The assailants then entered the house and confronted Mr. Sawh's

brother, Rajpat, 62, and another brother, Om Prakash, and demanded

cash and jewellery. They turned over $120 (U.S.), but the bandits

still shot Rajpat in the head and ordered Om to lie on his brother's

lifeless body before shooting him too. He survived.

 

Mr. Sawh's wife, Sattie, ran to call police and then hid in a

bathroom, while his sister, Phulmattie, 54, took refuge under a bed.

The gunmen found her and shot her before taking aim again at Mr. Sawh,

shooting him in the head before fleeing the quarter-hectare property

on foot.

 

"I honestly don't know why they killed them, because they demanded

cash and jewellery and yet they still turned around and they shoot

them," said Mrs. Sawh, who, the Associated Press said, could hear her

husband groaning in pain before he succumbed to his injuries.

 

Foreign Affairs Canada officials have visited the family in

Georgetown, said spokesman Rodney Moore in Ottawa, and the government

will evaluate and refer to the RCMP any official request for

assistance with the homicide investigation.

 

Guyana's President vowed yesterday to find those who carried out the

"well-planned and executed assassination.

 

"This was not primarily an attack on an individual, but a deliberate

assault on the values of our nation. It was an attempt to destabilize

our democracy," Mr. Jagdeo said. "As a nation we will face down this

threat."

 

The slayings come at a time of rising crime, gun violence and

political uncertainty in this former British colony of 767,000 people

on the northern coast of South America, next to Venezuela.

 

An election, scheduled for Aug. 4, was recently postponed to give

authorities more time to prepare.

 

A leading figure in the government at the time of his death, Mr. Sawh

fled Guyana and came to Toronto when he was 19. He settled in

Scarborough, studied economics at York University and became a

Canadian citizen. He also served as president of the Association of

Concerned Guyanese in Toronto, pressing for democracy.

 

In 1992, he returned to Guyana at the calling of then-president Cheddi

Jagan, who had steered the People's Progressive Party to victory in

what was considered the country's first free and fair election since

independence in 1966. Mr. Sawh was named ambassador to Venezuela,

Colombia and Ecuador, and later joined the government as minister of

fisheries and livestock and as agricultural minister.

 

More than 800 of Canada's 250,000-member Guyanese community gathered

Saturday night for a memorial at the Vedic Cultural Centre in Toronto.

 

"Mr. Sawh was a dynamic political leader who wanted the best for his

country and mobilized for change," said Basil Punit, president of the

Canada-Guyana Chamber of Commerce. "His sister was a bubbly character

and very involved with the Hindu Church in Toronto, and his brother

Raj was involved in sports and with the Association of Concerned

Guyanese."

 

Mr. Sawh's eldest son, 19-year-old Roger, lives in Toronto where he

attends university. He flew to Georgetown yesterday for the funeral.

 

In a 1997 interview with the Chronicle, a Guyanese paper, Mr. Sawh

talked about devoting his life to politics: "I like going out and

meeting people, I like trying to help particularly small people, poor

people," he said.

 

Mr. Punit speculated that the killing of Mr. Sawh, of East Indian

origin, was both racially and politically motivated. "There are

historical tensions between blacks and East Indians in Guyana, and the

PPP is considered to be a party for East Indians," he said.

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