The Gender Equality Forum (GEF) today lobbied for hate crime laws to be instituted in Guyana as it launched its report on hate crimes in the country.
The report provides a situational analysis on hate crime in Guyana, taking into account the causes of such crimes, and how hate crime legislation could help to prevent them from happening.
According to the report, hate crimes are motivated by discriminatory belief systems, such as racism, patriarchal sexism, homophobia and transphobia. It said these ideologies regard certain groups as superior, in contrast with inferior, alienated or minority groups within society.
Guyana Equality Forum Managing Director, Joel Simpson, said in the absence of hate crime laws, the Forum found it difficult garner statistical data on hate crimes that were committed based on one’s race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. However, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that hate crime is a major issue.
Pointing to the murders of the Henry Cousins and Haresh Singh in September 2020, Simpson said evidence suggests that race related hate crimes escalated towards the end of the 2020 General and Regional Elections.
“We definitely saw an upshoot during the study period of hate crimes relating to race and ethnicity, and chapter one gives the examples, ‘the Henry Boys,’ Haresh Singh [and] the retaliatory murders. So, we saw that in more prominent ways that you haven’t seen since we have gotten out of that Elections cycle,” Simpson said.
He said for LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups in Guyana including indigenous peoples, it is almost a daily occurrence.
“Where LGBTIQ issues are concerned it is very hard to tell because there tends to be so much under reporting that I am very cautious about saying that because we are getting more reports or because the media is highlighting it more, that there is an increase. I think hate crimes against LGBTIQ people and [though] they don’t necessarily result in murder, but there is the issue of harassment. For LGBTIQ people that’s an every day reality,” he said.
Researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, Pere DeRoy, in compiling the situational analysis, said while hate crime legislation, employs a narrow definition that does not consider violence against women to be a crime, there is a wide range of crimes committed against women that can be considered to be hate crimes.
He reasoned that acts of domestic violence can be considered hate crimes when the violence is committed on the basis of the victim not fulfilling the perpetrator’s ideas of the victim’s proper gender role.
Attorney-at-Law Rosemary Benjamin-Noble explained that while Article 149 of the Constitution provides for the protection of the individual from discrimination on several grounds including race, disability, sex, gender and religion, it does not explicitly refer to sexual orientation or gender identity.
Further, she noted that while there is no dedicated hate crime legislation in Guyana, some offences which are akin to hate crime or hate speech can be found in several pieces of legislation.
Existing legislation includes the Persons with Disabilities Act, the Racial Hostility Act, the Representation of the People Act, and the Cyber Crime Act.
The Attorney said Guyana could do well to repeal any discriminatory provisions and institute Hate Crime Legislation.
“Guyana should repeal any discriminatory provisions from its legislation, in particular Sections 351 to 353 of the Criminal Law (Offences) Act. Any Hate crime legislation should also reflect a sufficiently broad range of protected characteristics to ensure protection for key targeted communities in Guyana. And given the limited resources of the police and prosecutors, a model hate crime legislation which is simple to understand, investigate and prosecute would be preferable to help ensure that it is utilized and effective in practice,” the Attorney said.
The Gender Equality Forum is hoping to receive support from other civil society groups and from both the Government and the Opposition to bring a Hate Crime Legislation into effect.
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