Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 21, 2012 APNU Column, Features / Columnists
The People’s Progressive Party Civic administration has stood witness to the killing of more than 300 Guyanese citizens – mostly young males – by members of the Guyana Police over its 20 years in office from 1992 to 2012.
There have been scores of other extra-judicial killings carried out by persons said to be members of death squads and ‘phantom gangs.’ This number of deaths means that the Police have been killing young men at a rate of about 15 per year throughout the PPPC term in office.
Police killings over the past 20 years have been seared into the psyche of the nation. The high rate of killings is unforgettable. Residents of the Buxton-Friendship community on the East Coast Demerara recently erected a towering monument to the memory of persons who were killed during the ‘Troubles’ during the past decade.
The Guyana Police Force also acknowledged the enormity of the atrocity. It chose, however, to erect a monument in Eve Leary to the memory of its own police victims of that period and other times.
The Guyana Human Rights Association published a book – Ambivalent about Violence: A Report on Fatal Shootings by the Police, 1980-2001 – which gave an account of police killings up to the outbreak of the Troubles. This was followed by another book –When the Young Die. Extra-judicial Killings in Guyana, 1993-2002 –published by the People’s National Congress Reform.
The United States Department of State continues to publish, every year, its Country Report on Human Rights Practices, which features a section on the ‘Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life.’ The Report usually iterates its warning that, in Guyana, “The most significant reported abuses included potentially unlawful killings by police…” The Report provides an annual tally of police killings, among other things.
The Joint Opposition Political Parties – at that time comprising the Alliance for Change; Guyana Action Party; National Front Alliance; People’s National Congress Reform and Working People’s Alliance – published the landmark Dossier in Support of an Independent Legal Interrogation of Grave Human Rights Abuses in Guyana, in November 2009.
Bharrat Jagdeo himself, for the first time in the history of this country, was obliged to establish a Presidential Commission of Inquiry to investigate one of his own Ministers. That inquiry was given the mandate to determine “whether and to what extent the Minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Gajraj, has been involved in promoting, directing or otherwise engaging in activities which have involved the extra-judicial killing of persons.”
These commissions, dossiers, monuments and reports all indicate a deep public concern with the extraordinary number of killings which occurred largely during Bharrat Jagdeo’s 12-year presidency. They point, to the fact, also, that neither the Minister of Home Affairs nor the PPPC administration has accepted responsibility for the deaths of over 300 persons in past 20 years.
Neither Minister nor President has seen the need to implement a policy to bring the killings to a halt.
Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform, Brigadier David Granger, has urged civil society to speak out against Police killings. He has encouraged citizens, individually and collectively, to exert pressure on the government to bring Police killings to a halt.
He called on persons of goodwill, in light of the parlous public security situation in the country, to demand that the PPPC administration implement measures to protect citizens from Police violence, to reform the Police Force itself and to remove the incumbent Minister of Home Affairs.
The PNCR has always rejected the usual excuses uttered by the Police that they “shot the victims while attempting to arrest them” or while a crime was being committed. Many citizens realise – and most non-governmental, human rights activists acknowledge – that the PPPC administration has consistently taken a lax attitude towards the investigation of police abuses during its 20-year tenure of office.
Policemen have not usually been punished for extra-judicial killings. Inquests by Coroners and District Magistrates or independent judicial inquiries have rarely been convened into fatal shootings by Police. Documents required to prosecute the Police have occasionally disappeared from the responsible magistrate’s office.
The PNCR maintains that members of the PPPC administration still seem to refuse to recognise the 300 police killings in 20 years as a serious public problem. The PPPC also refuses to conduct investigations into Police killings.
The PNCR repeats its call for the President of Guyana to dismiss the current Minister of Home Affairs so that Police reform can begin and the killings can be brought to an end. Rohee has to know that his mismanagement of public security over the past six years has contributed measurably to the extraordinary pattern of Police killings and the present mood of insecurity and tension in the country. Rohee has shown little zeal in pursuing and punishing the culprits, including those who still wear police uniforms.
Rohee has failed to use his ministerial authority to investigate allegations of unlawful killings in the Guyana Police Force which is directly his responsibility.
Rohee’s tenure of office, like that of Ronald Gajraj, will be remembered for the perpetuation of police killings of young men and for the destruction of public trust in the Police Force. It is time for Rohee to go.
JAGDEO ADDING MORE DANGER TO GUYANA AND THE REGION
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