President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s strongman ordered the nation’s state-owned companies to immediately begin exploring and exploiting the oil, gas, and mines in Guyana’s Essequibo Region. The director came after the Venezuelan president held a referendum to reclaim the 61,600 square miles (159,500 km) territory, which accounts for two-thirds of Guyana and also Brazil and is almost the size of Greece.
Hindus in Guyana
Guyana is also home to more than 200,000-250,000 Hindus, making it the only nation in the Western Hemisphere with a sizeable Hindu population, according to an international research institute. Close to around 37 per cent of the Essequibo population, as per data from 2012, follow Hinduism.
Reports by Guyana-based news agencies showed that the Hindu community held yagnas, community events and functions during religious festivals, and the Essequibo Hindu Community also won several awards at the annual Diwali motorcycle contest held in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown.
Guyanese Hindus are also struggling to keep their traditions alive in the face of many challenges, according to the blog post by the Hindu American Foundation. The Guyanese Hindus are the descendants of Hindus from North and South India who were taken to the South American nation as labourers in the plantations during the colonial period following the abolition of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
Why does Venezuela want Essequibo?
Venezuela has for decades laid claim to Essequibo, home to 125,000 Guyana’s and 800,000 citizens. Litigation is pending before the ICJ in the Hague over where the borders should lie, according to a report from a media agency.
Guyana, a former British and Dutch colony, insisted that the frontiers were determined by an arbitration panel in 1899. But Venezuela, which does not have the ICJ jurisdiction in the matter, claims that the Essequibo River to the east forms a natural border and had historically been recognised as such, the news agency further said in its report.
Following the referendum held in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, earlier this weekend, Maduro ordered the creation of local subsidiaries of the nation’s public companies, including oil giant PDVSA and mining conglomerate Corporación Venezolana de Guayana. He asked these companies “to grant operational licenses for the exploration of and exploitation of oil, gas and amines in the entire area of our Essequibo.”
The strongman threw his entire weight behind the referendum and has set his eyes on the area after ExxonMobil discovered oil in commercial quantities in 2015. Jose Luis Cova, a 45-year-old man who lives near two voting centres in Caracas, the capital, said polling stations were empty. I do not know where they got the number of people who have supposedly voted for Essequibo,” Cova was quoted as saying by the news agency.
Guyana, for its part, said that it would remain vigilant. Guyana has denounced the referendum as a pretext to annex the land and has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to intervene after Maduro said he plans to build a bridge and airstrip to serve as a logical support point for the integral development of Essequibo.
Orders of the ICJ
The ICJ ordered the Venezuelan government not to take any action that would alter Guyana’s control over a disputed territory but also did not bar it from holding the sham referendum. “We always have to remain vigilant. Of course, our monitoring must be done at a high level. President Maduro, while we do not believe that he will order an invasion or can do something that can be very predictable,” Foreign Minister Hugh Todd told an international agency.
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