Guyana warns Venezuelans in Essequibo vote over treason risk
Guyana’s military chief says Venezuelans in Guyana who take part in Venezuela’s Essequibo vote could face treason charges, arrest and deportation.
2025-05-21 sharpened tensions around the Essequibo dispute even before Venezuela’s planned vote on the contested territory. Guyana’s defense chief warned that any resident who takes part in elections organized by Venezuela over Essequibo will face treason and other felony charges, and he said Venezuelans living in Guyana could also be arrested and deported. The warning is a direct attempt to deter participation in a vote that Georgetown sees as a threat to its sovereignty.
Brig. Gen. Omar Khan’s comments to AP left little room for ambiguity. He said participation would amount to support for a “passive coup,” framing the issue as a national-security matter rather than a foreign-policy disagreement. That language matters because the Essequibo issue is not a symbolic border quarrel; it involves a region that makes up roughly two-thirds of Guyana and contains valuable natural resources, including gold, diamonds, timber and offshore oil-linked economic importance.
The regional dispute has intensified since Venezuela moved to hold a referendum and later elections tied to the territory. Caracas has long claimed Essequibo as its own, while Guyana has administered and controlled the area for decades. The warning from Guyana came against a backdrop of mounting friction, including reported attacks on Guyanese soldiers patrolling a border river and a history of threats from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to annex the region.
Guyana is also thinking about the human dimension. Foreign Secretary Robert Persaud said nearly 100,000 people of direct or indirect Venezuelan ancestry live in the country. That means the warning applies not only to diplomats and political actors but to a large community with family, work and residence ties across the border. The government’s message is that legal status in Guyana does not shield people from consequences if they cross into an event that Georgetown treats as an attack on its territorial integrity.
The disputed territory remains before the International Court of Justice, where Guyana wants the 1899 border ruling upheld. Venezuela rejects that framework and instead argues that a later agreement changed the legal picture. In that sense, the coming vote is not a standalone event but another move in a long legal and political confrontation over who gets to define the border.
The United States has also entered the rhetorical fight. AP reported that U.S. Ambassador Nicole Theriot dismissed Maduro’s threats as bluster and reaffirmed U.S. backing for Guyana. That external support raises the diplomatic stakes, but the immediate issue is local: whether people living inside Guyana will heed the warning and stay away from the Venezuelan vote. On 2025-05-21, Georgetown made clear that it intends to treat participation not as a political gesture, but as a punishable breach of law.
