Army probing allegations of soldiers who robbed miners

– team headed by a lieutenant colonel dispatched

Environment Minister Robert Persaud

A high ranking Guyana Defence Force (GDF) officer and members of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) will be heading to Eteringbang to probe allegations of soldiers robbing and beating miners in the area.
The GDF said in a statement on Monday, that it acknowledges a report in the Kaieteur News (KN) dated Monday, January 28, 2013. According to the KN report, a gang of heavily-armed soldiers on Friday last, allegedly swooped down on the mining community of ‘Devil’s Hole’ in Cuyuni and beat and robbed several miners of a large quantity of raw gold.
They were at the time clad in their uniforms. The KN report quoted a miner as saying that on Friday, the ranks landed at the Julian Ross Landing, Devils’ Hole, Cuyuni, and confronted some small drug dealers, seizing their drugs, which they consumed in the full view of the public. The ranks allegedly later harassed persons, including women.
The miner related that the soldiers then managed to force the owner of an all-terrain vehicle to transport them to an area where several Brazilian mining operations were taking place, at which point they allegedly relieved several camps of raw gold before escaping. The GDF statement said Chief of Staff, Commodore Gary Best has already begun to speak to miners in the area, and has dispatched an investigative team headed by a lieutenant colonel, who is accompanied by GPF members, to the area.

A serious matter
The GDF acknowledged that “this is a very serious matter and it will have the full rigour of our investigations. The GDF is committed to making the mining community a safe zone so our citizens and international investors can ply their trade peacefully.”
It is not the first time allegations of lawmen fleecing miners, particularly Brazilians, have surfaced. Back in October last year, Natural Resources and the Environment Minister Robert Persaud had disclosed that he had received reports of police ranks shaking down miners.
The minister said then that his ministry received reports that the police were shaking down miners, and had just concluded an operation in the Cuyuni area, where ranks and officers were alleged to have been engaged in such activity.
“I have brought the issue to the attention of the Ministry of Home Affairs and we have also written to the commissioner of police,” he said. “It is an issue that we have been receiving reports about this and we expect the Guyana Police Force would take them very seriously and would deal with them in any manner that is befitting,” Persaud said then.
Meanwhile, Persaud’s statement had come around the same time when two police constables Leedon Aaron, 25, and Marlon Letlow, 27, were discovered dead on a trail between Paramakatoi and Karispuri. The two constables were suspected to have been killed as a result of an alleged racket of “shaking down” miners in the mining community.