GUYANA

The Royal Navy’s HMS Trent, a patrol vessel, is participating in joint exercises with Guyana. This follows a visit by David Rutley, a Foreign Office minister, who said that the UK would work ‘to ensure the territorial integrity of Guyana would be upheld’ and referred to ‘our Guyanese friends’. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: ‘HMS Trent will visit regional ally and Commonwealth partner Guyana later this month as part of a series of engagements in the region during her Atlantic patrol task deployment.’

Venezuela has recently made threats about a long-standing border dispute concerning the Essequibo region of Guyana, where substantial oil reserves have been discovered off the coast. Guyana looks set to become very wealthy as a result. GDP grew by 43 per cent in 2020 alone.

Guyana, 29 per cent of whose 795,000 citizens are of African descent, was a British colony from 1796, with a subsequent treaty with the Dutch in 1814 that extended the colony’s size and borders. With the merger of two British territories, the colony was known as British Guyana from 1831. Slavery was abolished in 1834. Independence was granted in 1966. In 1970, the Commonwealth country became a republic.

In August 2023, the Muslim president, Irfaan Ali, demanded reparations from the descendants of European slave traders and also demanded that such slave traders be posthumously charged with crimes against humanity. Ali said: ‘The transatlantic slave trade and African enslavement were an affront to humanity itself. The heinousness of this crime against humanity demands that we seek to right these wrongs.’ Legal action is being considered in furtherance of these claims. Other Caribbean countries are also involved.

Recently, Judge Patrick Robinson, a Jamaican, said: ‘I believe that the United Kingdom will not be able to resist this movement towards the payment of reparations: it is required by history and it is required by law.’

Following the announcement of the deployment of HMS Trent, Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan president, in a televised address, said: ‘We believe in diplomacy, in dialogue, in peace. But no one should threaten Venezuela, no one should mess with Venezuela. We are a people of peace, but we are warriors and this threat is unacceptable for any sovereign country. The threat of the decadent, rotten, ex-empire of the United Kingdom is unacceptable.’

Those who mean you harm are, by definition, your enemies. Any country that demands British money, territory, or the prosecution/persecution of British citizens, or does not respect British sovereignty is an enemy of the UK. The Guyanese are not the UK’s friends, but are our enemies.

There are many Guyanese immigrants in the UK, one of whom has been vocal for decades as to how racist the UK is.

Those countries which are enemies of the UK should be treated as such. Their citizens should not be given visas and certainly not citizenship. They should not expect favours from the UK, and the UK should not be willing to become embroiled in a war in defence of those countries. There should be no question of any foreign aid.