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An indefensible reputation

Mar 27, 2015 Editorial

The discoveries this week of three bodies at separate locations on the foreshores of East Coast Demerara have stunned the nation. We have in the past experienced the sickening period when gunmen left bodies everywhere but this current sequence, we believe, is unprecedented.
It was last Sunday morning, in Kitty, when the battered body of a 29-year-old man was found on the seawall. Then on Wednesday it was the heart-rending discovery at Turkeyen of a 14-year-old female student of Campbellville Secondary School. And as if to erase from our memories the violation of those two poor souls, hours later the dismembered body of a woman, without a head, hands and feet, was found at Annandale.
There is absolutely nothing that suggests we have become immune or insensitive to this murderous madness. We cannot ever. The bewildered faces of the curious onlookers at each scene, including very young children, told stories difficult to relate in words.
These deaths are proof that resident evil lurks in our midst. The mutilated body at Annandale speaks to an elevated level of such malevolence.
We are all deeply concerned about the current levels of violence in our society. There are almost hourly media reports of sickening varieties of violence. Despite justice system reforms and increased penalties for perpetrators of these heinous acts, nothing seems to serve as a deterrent.
It is as if all of a sudden human life has no value. Of course, this has not happened overnight. It came about when parents relaxed on teaching their children moral values. In keeping with the adage that a village raises a child, older people in the community had no problem disciplining an errant child.
But parents began to take umbrage and soon the very village took a backward step from correcting the child. The result is palpable; children began to push the limits of discipline. The more the village elders remained silent, the more the children pushed. Those brutal killings that we witness today are the result of that breakdown in society.
Murders are not new to Guyana but the incidence is. For this year we have been recording an average of three murders every week. Yet these murders were not nearly as brutal as the one that occurred on the Annandale foreshore. This is an exceedingly brutal killing that suggests that the killer had no moral upbringing.
Life has become more perilous for us all. There are no “safe” neighbourhoods. There is always a reminder of how vulnerable we are. Our exposure to extreme violence is ubiquitous. We are witnessing it ad nauseam.
We consume daily reports of child molestations and unimaginable lewdness. On our televisions it is no different. War in foreign territories, with all its atrocities, as well as harrowing tales and depictions of murder, rape, and robberies also continue to invade our homes visually. One suspects that perversion and moral decline are the only elements that can spawn from all this.
But there can be hope, a reversal of this trend that seems to be gaining momentum. For starters, people can begin to pay closer attention to their children with a view to making them better citizens.
No one wants to cry when one’s offspring is caught up in an untoward situation that can prove detrimental. Just Thursday we heard the comments of parents who heard their sons get 75-year jail sentences.
One parent proclaimed that the boys did not deserve such a sentence since they were not animals. But they did behave like animals when they killed a man on the roadway for no reason.
Guyana is a small, developing nation with lofty aspirations, but our lawless reputation in many spheres of life is becoming indefensible.

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