Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has reminded that it is a criminal offence for persons to enter Amerindian Villages without their permission.
This, he said, is catered for under the Amerindian Act 2006 and has been the practice long before the law was in effect.
“The Amerindian Villages historically and under the Amerindian Act are not public property, they are private property, most of them communally owned by title and therefore unauthorised persons can’t enter an Amerindian reservation – that’s what it’s called in North America – without permission. The same position obtains in Guyana under the Amerindian Act,” Nandlall explained during his programme “Issues in the News” on Tuesday.
“If you enter an Amerindian Village without permission, you commit a criminal offence and you can be charged and placed before a magistrate for a summary offence,” he added.
According to Nandlall, the only persons, under the law, who have authority to enter Amerindian Villages are government officers for the purpose of conducting government business.
At least one Toshao has come forward to express concerns that a presidential hopeful forced his way into an Amerindian Village, without the community’s permission, to do political work.
United States-sanctioned businessman Azruddin Mohamed reportedly entered the village of Wikki Calcuni in the Berbice River without permission.
“Any political person who wants to come must do it the right way — write to the Council, get approval. Don’t bully your way in,” the Toshao Kevin Seegolam told a media entity.
Seegolam had noted too that most of Mohamed’s ‘supporters’ who accompanied him were outsiders. “It wasn’t our people…,” he said.
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