Guyana: Detention of Mormon missionaries handled clumsily

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — Guyana's security ministry should have "better handled" the detention of about 40 Mormon missionaries who have been ordered to leave the country because their travel documents were out of date, President Bharrat Jagdeo said Friday.

Jagdeo told reporters he disagreed with the way the missionaries, mainly U.S. citizens, were briefly detained last week but said their work permits were expired and immigration rules had to be enforced in the small nation on South America's north shoulder.

"I didn't think, frankly speaking, that we needed to round people up. It is not the image of Guyana that we want to portray, particularly where it concerns religious people. But the police have to enforce the immigration laws of our country," he said in the capital, Georgetown.

Some government officials have said privately that ruling party leaders felt the Mormons were too close to opposition figures and also were wary of the church's independent charity work in the interior.

"Some officials had become uncomfortable with them around," Donald Ramotar of the governing People's Progressive Party suggested last week.

Jagdeo declined to comment on such statements, saying only that Guyana is "very welcoming, but we also have laws."

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues said the United States has asked Guyanese authorities to clarify rules for renewing work permits so that similar incidents with U.S. missionaries can be avoided.

The main opposition party said the roundup denied the church workers due process and set a bad example as Guyana complains to neighboring countries about the deportation of its own citizens.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been sending missionaries to this former British colony for more than 20 years. About 100 of them are now in Guyana, many deep in the country's interior, where the government has little presence.

Church spokeswoman Kim Farah, in a Friday e-mail from Salt Lake City, said church officials are "working with Guyana and U.S. authorities to reach an amicable solution."

Calls made Friday to church officials in Guyana were not immediately returned.