Letters to Stabroek News
Will there be an inquest?
Dear Editor,
Those of us who condemned the fatal and abusive attacks by the gunmen should
now have the freedom to comment on the quality of law enforcement.
In an early joint letter, Andaiye, Dr. David Hinds
and I called a spade a spade. We also called on the government to take measures
within the law to give law enforcers power to deal with lawlessness. We were
not thinking of a State of
My own earlier and later recommendations to address the deceived lawbreakers
seemed to amuse or anger sections of the people.
The government has claimed, however, that there is no crisis. Next, the
security forces have been seen as neutral in the face of offences. That state
of mind left them without the zeal to restrain a movement which they knew to be
political. The government was in a state of vanity and the forces in a state of
neutrality.
The present incidents of crime are of an altered pattern and show at present no
sign of the political association. The weapons are the same but the aims are
different. The drug lords have been exploiting a disorder they did not create.
It could only have been created through a political force. I sincerely hope
that the force I suspect was not an instrument of drug lords.
It should be realised that alert
intelligence units know a lot about government and opposition, their linkages
and their routines, even their social lives. Let no one be in doubt about this.
Recent information received suggests that the anti -Black Clothes movement had
wide support among the regular forces. Whenever it was organised,
it would seem that the Phantom Unit(s) first engaged in activity at the time
last year of a previous high profile kidnapping, if not also earlier at the
time of
Many in the forces must have argued that if a pro- government activist could
get away with SLRs in his home, after the 1997
elections, they should turn a blind eye to weapons headed for the
The statements and acts of conscience, the vigils of GIHA,
of the women in WAVE and Red Thread, supported by men, GHRA’s
even handed advice, the massive witness of the churches, the voices from within
their own camps, the strong witness of the Churches led by the Pentecostals in
Buxton-Annandale, since June 2001, altered leaders’ words, but not their
postures or their actions.
It took an international incident to cause the government
and the main opposition to reach agreements, which they had found impossible to
reach since August, 2000, and in some cases since 1998. And because the
agreement was a reaction to the brazen kidnapping of a US Security Officer, the
police became a focus of concern. It seems that our authorities considered that
a demonstration operation was necessary to send the right message and to show
that things were changing. It was duly staged, based on a “tip-off” which took
the forces to old, familiar places. All who give lip service to human rights,
sign covenants and treaties, must ask as in the case of the Enmore
martyrs (1948) whether firing was necessary, and if it was, must ask “did some
of the firing go beyond the requirements of the situation?”
Will there be an inquest? There was a good chance, with the
dead ‘lying’ there posing for the camera, for a medical officer to see them as
they lay, as the law advises.
Was a medical officer taken to observe the bodies before they were removed?
What is the victim’s specific guilt? What was the course of the engagement
resulting in the total death, not one being left to assist the police? Will the
officer in charge get permission to leave the country, like Mr. Merai?
The administration wishes the public to assume that the Army and the Police
acted lawfully. By some means, the administration must allow the police and the
army to describe the two incidents in detail. So here we have an administration
and security forces moving from suspicion of malicious neglect of
responsibility and duty to suspicion of massacre. It is hard to please anyone
in a country in which neither unofficial nor official gunmen respect the right
to life.
The active gunmen, coming from among the poor, had no sympathy for other poor
people. I hope there can be an end to the bloodshed as soon as possible. There
has been rightly a lot of interest in the racial statistics of the deaths. The
class composition will tell another story and give a needed warning. But we
cannot miss the fact that apart from one high profiled man charged with
treason, and the business people who have been killed and hurt, the victims of
both police and freedom fighters alike have been the wretched of the earth.. This includes the unknown UG student and the ten year old
unknown child; not unidentified, but unknown.
I argue the arms build up, the use of arms and the
abuse of a village were not by chance. If I am right, there are Masterminds
behind it. Their names have been protected. Their reputations have not been
questioned.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana