Mocha Arcadia squatters to pay $2 million in costs following court ruling

After failing to prove legal rights to the Mocha Arcadia/Caneview lands, the remaining squatters must pay $2 million in costs to the case’s three respondents: the Attorney General, the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA), and the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo).

The landmark ruling was delivered last week by Chief Justice Roxanne George,  solidifying the government’s legal ownership of the lands and its right to take necessary steps to remove the squatters.

The lands were owned by the GuySuCo and later transferred to the CHPA.

According to the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall SC, this judgement serves as a timely reminder of the legal position that squatters have no legal rights to the land they are occupying.

The AG was at the time speaking during his weekly programme, ‘Issues in the News’.

For context, these squatters refused to relocate from the area, despite having been served adequate notices by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA), and despite the government’s attempts to incentivise this relocation.

“They were served with notices as far back as 2008. Those notices requested them to remove and indicated to them that this land will be used for the construction of a highway,” AG Nandlall said.

This engagement continued in 2021, and the residents were again informed that the lands were required for the construction of the four-lane highway. Most of the over 150 residents heeded the warnings, and were offered house lots and compensation to move.

“The government paid some $250 million in compensation to the squatters. [We] gave them titled lands with houses and helped them to move, and on top of that, gave them $250 million in compensation,” he emphasised.

Moreover, the squatters proved through their own evidence that they engaged the government to regularise the area, which invalidated their argument that they acquired prescriptive rights.

“If it is your property, as you claim, and it is not the government’s property or the state’s property, why are you petitioning the state to regularise you? The state can only regularise you if it is the State’s land,” he pointed out.  

The AG said that the claimants failed abysmally to prove any legal interests in the lands and as a result, the State was wholly justified in taking steps to remove them from the area.

“That is the law of Guyana and of any other country. The lawful owner of a property reserves the legal rights and powers to take such steps that may be necessary, including using reasonable force to remove and eject from his or her land any squatter.  You do not necessarily need an order of court to remove a squatter from your land,” he added.

The attorney general said that many lessons can be learned from this judgement, as it underscores the importance of adhering to land laws and the legal rights of property owners to remove squatters. 

“If you are ever in doubt, this decision clarifies for any squatter or potential squatter what your legal status is. You have no right, no interest or title to that land, and the State or the owner can use force and remove you and your erections and buildings from that land without any liability whatsoever.”

“I hope that the public across this country understands that now,” he said. 

Political Pawns

Turning his attention to the political dimensions of the case, the attorney general sternly criticised the opposition for wielding these Guyanese as political tools in their quest for relevance in the public sphere.

He said that they blatantly misrepresented the situation and failed to provide the legal assistance they had promised the squatters.  

In fact, the legal affairs minister cited news reports that recorded the Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton in 2022 urging the Mocha squatters not to remove from the lands, asserting that they are “ancestral lands”.

The attorney general stressed once more that Guyana’s law does not recognise the concept of “ancestral lands”, yet the opposition persists in hammering this notion into the minds of Guyanese.

Minister Nandlall further pointed out that the very Opposition Leader who was so adamant that these residents have legal rights to the lands they were squatting on was conveniently absent when the time came for the residents to defend these alleged rights in the Court.

Specifically calling out the International Decade of People of African Descent (IPADA-G), the AG noted that despite their fervor to approach international organisations with these very claims and their passionate postulations in the public domain, the opposition advocates abandoned the Mocha residents when they faced the consequences of not complying with the law.

“I still have not heard any statement from the Leader of the Opposition or any opposition parliamentarian or politician saying what assistance they will give to those people who are now homeless and, I suppose, hopeless. They used those people, abused them and discarded them,” he denounced.

He continued that despite there being five lawyers on the Opposition benches, none of them appeared in Court to represent the squatters. 

“They held several press conferences, championing this cause, misleading these people. They went to the United Nations to lodge complaints. All bark, no bite. When it comes to actual representation and rendering actual assistance to these people, no one came forward, but you will hear [them] champion the cause of African Guyanese in the parliament.”