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Wednesday, June 18, 2025

US diplomat urges peace and calm as the burial of Younge scheduled for Monday

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
43 days ago
20250505
FILE - Adriana Younge. (File Photo/CMC)

FILE - Adriana Younge. (File Photo/CMC)

File Photo/CMC

The Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to Guyana, Nicole The­ri­ot, ap­pealed to­day for peace and the rule of law, as the Caribbean coun­try gets ready to say a fi­nal good­bye to 11-year-old Adri­ana Younge, whose body was found in a swim­ming pool as a ho­tel late last month.

Younge is sched­uled to be buried on Mon­day. Her fam­i­ly has con­firmed the date and is urg­ing the pub­lic to re­main peace­ful and avoid any protests.

An au­top­sy con­duct­ed by three in­ter­na­tion­al­ly re­spect­ed pathol­o­gists last week had con­clud­ed that Younge died by drown­ing, but there have been calls for an in­ter­na­tion­al probe in­to the death of the child with sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal par­ties and civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tors dis­miss­ing a re­port from Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali that Younge did not die from “force­ful drown­ing”.

Cit­ing a lack of con­fi­dence in the Guyana Po­lice Force (GPF), the fam­i­ly and the op­po­si­tion have called for the in­ter­na­tion­al probe af­ter the child’s body was found in a pool at the Dou­ble Day Ho­tel, Tuschen, East Bank Es­se­qui­bo un­der con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances.

A GPF state­ment had state­ment that she had been seen on gov­ern­ment video sur­veil­lance cam­eras en­ter­ing an iden­ti­fi­able car.

Last week, the gov­ern­ment had an­nounced a four-and-a-half-hour cur­few and the or­der, which was gazetted last Tues­day, stat­ed that “there shall be no pub­lic meet­ings, gath­er­ings, and as­sem­blies of per­sons, pro­ces­sion or march­es in any pub­lic space dur­ing the hours of 12:30 am and 5:00 am”, as the cap­i­tal re­mained a vir­tu­al ghost town.

“I ex­press my heart­felt con­do­lences fol­low­ing the trag­ic death of Adri­an­na Younge and share my deep con­cern and sor­row over the cri­sis and civ­il un­rest that have hap­pened in Guyana,” the US diplo­mat said in a mes­sage post­ed on the US Em­bassy Face­book on Mon­day.

“I en­cour­age all Guyanese cit­i­zens to re­main calm and voice their con­cerns through non-vi­o­lent means and to ad­here to the rule of law. Loot­ing and de­struc­tion of prop­er­ty are harm­ful to all. I strong­ly urge all in­volved to com­mit to peace as the Gov­ern­ment works to re­solve the sit­u­a­tion.

“The Unit­ed States re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the peo­ple of Guyana, our shared de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples, and the coun­try’s con­tin­ued sta­bil­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty,” The­ri­ot said.

Cit­ing a lack of con­fi­dence in the Guyana Po­lice Force (GPF), the fam­i­ly and the op­po­si­tion have called for in­ves­ti­ga­tors for the in­ter­na­tion­al probe.

The Min­istry of Home Af­fairs has warned that gov­ern­ment would not tol­er­ate any dis­rup­tions at the time of Younge’s fu­ner­al.

“The Guyana Po­lice Force, with the full sup­port of the Joint Ser­vices, is on alert to re­spond to spe­cif­ic and gen­er­al re­quests to calls for ser­vice from the pub­lic to as­sure calm and se­cu­ri­ty,” the min­istry said.

It re­mind­ed cit­i­zens of the need to en­able “a non-dis­rup­tive, safe and re­spect­ful at­mos­phere, on May 5, 2025, ‘Ar­rival Day’, suf­fi­cient­ly con­ducive to en­abling the fu­ner­al arrange­ments for Younge, as well as the suc­cess­ful com­mence­ment of sit­tings of the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) ex­am­i­na­tions…and the full re­turn to safe and nor­mal un­der­tak­ings through­out the coun­try.” —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)


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