Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
May 07, 2014 Editorial
The brutal murder of Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal has stunned the region. The calculated nature of her assassination was indeed chilling. The message was clear. This is a no-nonsense gang.
Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has announced that her Government is offering an additional $2.5 million (to the $1 million reward being offered by CrimeStoppers) to anyone who could help with information leading to the arrest, prosecution and conviction of those involved.
She also stated that should the investigation require foreign resources and expertise, that too would be provided by the State.
Dana Seetahal was a fearless prosecutor who had prosecuted attempted-coup leader Abu Bakr in the past and successfully won the lawsuit which enabled the State to sell the former insurgent’s property. Up to the time of her death, she was prosecutor in another high-profile case—the murder trial of Vindra Naipaul-Coolman.
According to the pathologist who performed the autopsy, the victim was hit five times—twice to the right side of her head, once to her chest, and twice to the right arm.
The vicious elimination of this fearless legal luminary by an obviously well-organized group of criminals certainly did not go unnoticed in these parts. It was an eerie reminder of the emergence and continued existence of heavily-armed gangs in Guyana, and a signal that this nation must gather all its resources to deal with this problem before it gets worse.
Criminal gangs in Guyana are nothing new. But the increasing use of guns by such gangs is a most alarming development. Street thugs who were once content to choke and rob have embraced a deadly new dimension of crime, the type that grows from the barrel of a gun.
It also seems that disputes among them which used to be settled by flailing fists and the occasional use of a blade now seem to be settled more and more by flying lead.
We must wake up, stand up and fight and demand that our leaders take firm and urgent action to stamp out escalating gun violence in Guyana.
This is a multi-dimensional problem and requires a multi-faceted approach. Social workers, school authorities, police officials, government administrators, churches and the community as a whole, must band together, put aside individual differences and work to create a safe environment for children of this generation to grow up in.
We have to take action quickly while the problem is still manageable. We ought to strengthen or enforce ordinances prohibiting harassment, loitering or any form of belligerent public behaviour such as assembling at street corners, consuming alcohol in public and playing loud music.
We also have to encourage citizens to make full use of police hotlines to inform the authorities about any suspicious group or suspect activities they observe.
For the sake of our youths, community leaders must show solidarity for civility, peace and the rule of law. By standing together, they could show that the rising tide of criminals with guns is not just a police problem but is the concern of all law-abiding citizens.
Guyana’s criminal gangs with guns, like those elsewhere, do not respect anyone. We are all at risk, if not as targets as innocent bystanders at the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the fight to restore peace and stability to our society, we cannot shrink from public exposure of social problems behind the growing gun and gang phenomenon. If we hide from these problems, gun crime will not only continue but it will get worse.
This is the time for all right-thinking Guyanese to get involved in a national drive to expose and thwart gun and gang activity.
If we don’t act now, as surely as night follows day, violent gun-toting gangs will make more blood flow in our streets as they have done in the past few years. If we don’t act now, their poison will sink deeper in our society and we will have only ourselves to blame.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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