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[Manner of Speaking]

Guyana asks Canada's help to investigate slayings
Agriculture minister and two siblings, all Canadians, gunned down near capital





MARINA JIMINEZ
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.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060424.GUYANA24/TPStory/TPInternational/

[Tiger Beer]

Why would the Guyana government be asking the Canadian government for help in the investigation of Canadians being slain there?

Isn't that just a given they would investigate?

[Manner of Speaking]

"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."


I would imagine Guyana is not a country with a state-of-the-art CSI lab.