Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 03, 2009 News
The assurances of the Commissioner of Police ring as hollow now as the Chief-of-Staff’s declarations about the professionalism of the Coast Guard a few months ago when ranks brutally murdered a young man.
So said Karen De Souza yesterday as the women and a few men from the Red Thread organization began protest actions on the outskirts of Police Headquarters, Eve Leary, and the Office of the President. Though they numbered less than 15 their messages were concise.
Speaking for the group, De Souza said it would be a mistake of enormous proportions if Guyana responded to the torture of the 14-year-old boy while in police custody as an isolated act of barbarity by individual out-of control policemen.
She noted, too, that these incidents fall into a pattern of behaviour which has been given free rein by the authorities responsible for controlling the activities of the Joint Services.
“Let the torture of this young boy be used to stop seeing evil only when it hurts our side.”
The group opined that some public opinion is still very coloured by the view that unlawful actions by the security forces against suspected criminals are justified in the interest of public safety.
Calling on citizens to look beyond race, De Souza said when young men of African descent are tortured or shot dead, a majority of non-Africans merely accept that they are criminals and that the police violation of law and Constitution is necessary action.
“Others who are not of this view are silenced by the official responses – if you object to the killing and torture of young men who are suspected of violent crimes, you are in sympathy with violent criminals.”
Red Thread recounted that in the last several years these views have come from the highest officials of the government, the members of the joint services. De Souza said.
“The fact that the more psychotic among them fail to understand that the worst excesses should only be directed at the “suspected criminals”, and then preferably in circumstances where it is less easy to verify allegations of torture, has now clearly exposed the danger of a population supporting or remaining silent in the face of unlawful actions by law enforcement agencies.”
De Souza, who stood amid the picketers with a poster of all cabinet members and the President attached to a photograph of the young man’s badly scorched lower torso, said “We must know that none of us is safe.”
De Souza also chided the ranks, saying that the professional men and women in these forces must know that they are tarnished by this behaviour, and by their acceptance of unlawful instructions.
She said those in the force that remain silent about wrongdoing among their ranks make them as guilty as the perpetrators.
The main theme of the picket exercises staged was “Draw the line”. Women on the picket line noted that it is past the time for all Guyanese to oppose the law-breaking elements of the Joint Services.
Red Thread also questioned if it is accidental that in the midst of the outcry against the latest police outrage that the President’s advisor on governance summoned a meeting yesterday for a conversation on security sector reform, providing a link to the correspondence between the Government of Guyana and the British on their recent differences of opinion on the security sector project.
They also took to task civil society saying “Will civil society continue to allow itself to be the mask behind which the President continues to excuse and justify the worst excesses of the state machinery?”
Categorically, the picketers agreed that “the torture of this teenager at Leonora is not the action of rogue police officers. It is the action of agents of a state gone rogue.” The group concluded that “the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces is ultimately responsible and he must be held to account.”
The picketing exercises that were supported by members of the Working People’s Alliance will continue daily.
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