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US wades into Minister for ‘slap and strip’ threats

- another tape surfaces as pressure mounts for his resignation

Even as he has received criticism from at least one member of the diplomatic corps, dozens of political

Minister of Health, Bheri Ramsaran

commentators and even members of his own party, Minister of Health, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran has once again lashed out at women rights activist, Sherlina Nageer. Mere hours after issuing a public apology for his “harsh words” the previous day, Ramsaran yesterday launched another tirade against Nageer. This time the Health Minister was recorded labeling Nageer a “miscreant,” saying that she was in need of “psychiatric help.” Yesterday, as he addressed a meeting of Regional Health Officers at the Main Street Plaza, Georgetown, Ramsaran, who is also a People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) candidate, was heard on a recording saying “So we have these miscreants who sometimes they are supported by the international community because they are rights activists; right to come spit in my face but not collect two slap, you understand me, or one of my ladies who love me, wreck her up, you understand me?” “Well you know I’m Bheri best, all the ladies like me. Suppose one of my big strong women seh “wuh yuh do we doctor, wuh yuh do dis innocent lil man?’ Wacks! Wacks! Then she’s going to become a hero; some of us will make sure we give her a medal. Right, spit in my face. I don’t know if she got rabies or what, I know she was rabid. That woman needs psychiatric help. She needs psychiatric help,” Ramsaran emphasised in the second recording. The Health Minister has already received condemnation from PPP/C’s Prime Ministerial Candidate

US Charge d’Affaires, Bryan Hunt

Elisabeth Harper, Education Minister Priya Manickchand, former President Bharrat Jagdeo and the youth and women arms of the APNU+AFC for the first attack against Nageer. US Charge d’Affaires Bryan Hunt is reported to have told online news agency, newssourcegy.com, that such statements have no place in a country like Guyana that has a high rate of domestic violence and sexual and gender-based violence. Hunt was recorded as saying “In a country that has a domestic violence rate as high as Guyana’s and a sexual assault rate as high as Guyana’s, it is downright irresponsible for any senior politician to make the statement to any woman, in public or in private, that the Minister of Health made the other day. It is completely unacceptable.” Hunt went on to state that “there is no possible reason or rationale to threaten sexual violence against anyone, but especially against a woman, given Guyana’s very serious gender-based violence problem”. Though he said he was pleased at the response of Ramsaran’s colleagues who took him to task for his comments, he considered the conduct “quite frankly to be a disgrace.” Hunt explained that while it was important and appropriate for the Minister to apologise for his conduct, “what would have been more appropriate was for him to never have made the statement in the first place”. “Do I think it is enough? I don’t think you can un-ring a bell. I don’t think you can take back the damage

Women’s Rights Activist, Sherlina Nageer

that would have already been done by suggesting that sexual violence is an appropriate response to whatever sort of provocation that the Minister felt he was under.” “I think the damage is much more severe than what the woman’s activist heard or the offence that she took at the remarks. I think it conveys a sense from a senior government official that somehow sexual violence is something that is appropriate to use, appropriate to threaten, and somehow societally acceptable and it’s not. It can’t be,” Hunt told the online agency. The excuse offered by Ramsaran has also been found as unacceptable by the US envoy who made it clear that he does not believe that there is any possible provocation that any woman could have made that would legitimately result in a response in which a senior government official threatens that woman with violence. “The Minister’s conduct was beyond, it was disgraceful…I think the question that should he be asked to resign is one the party has to struggle with internally and I will let them have their internal debates about that.” “Should he resign out of his own volition? I’m not going to prescribe to the Minister what he ought to do, but what I will say is in the United States if one of our candidate officials were to have made that sort of comment, that person would have been expected to resign without question. “I daresay, having had a conversation earlier today with some of my colleagues from the other western missions,that same principle would hold true across any number of countries that a Minister making that type of inappropriate remark for whatever reason would have chosen voluntarily to step down.” “I don’t believe that there is any possible provocation that any woman would have made that would have legitimately resulted in a response in which a senior government official threatens that woman with sexual violence…It was a threat of sexual violence and I can’t imagine what possible provocation could result in that reaction,” Hunt said. A number of non-governmental organisations and activists have issued a call for the Minister to step down from office. Meanwhile, more than 250 persons from across the Caribbean and the diaspora have signed on to the CatchAFyah Caribbean Feminist Network solidarity statement in support of Sherlina Nageer. The body had said that the invocation of “provocation” is frequently used to justify and rationalise men’s fatal violence against women and has crept into state and activist responses to violence. “The language of provocation, just like the denigrating language and threats the Minister directed at Sherlina, is the language of misogyny” the body said. They noted that Nageer was verbally abused for insisting that women’s lives and health matter. “She was threatened with the misogynist and violent acts of public stripping and beating for insisting that governments have a responsibility to ensure women have access to quality sexual and reproductive health services.” The body said it recognised such “abuses of state power as a reflection of hatred of women, an unwillingness to recognise us as fully human and a refusal to treat us as equals. They also reflect the callous disregard elected officials show for the people — boys and girls, women and men — they are meant to serve.”