The disturbingly distinctive characteristic of criminal violence in this country over the past six years has been the high incidence of massacres, or mass murders. Defined as “[involving] the murder of four or more victims at one location, within one event,” mass murders have become far too frequent occurrences.

Like the random rolling of dice or tossing of coins, a pattern started to emerge since 2002. There have now been at least twelve massacres with an average of 6.5 deaths each. The killing of such large numbers has had the power to simultaneously sadden, shame and shock society, regardless of the race, religion, social class or occupation of the victims.

Even in the best of times, the taking of any human life is odious. Unlawful killings of large numbers are even more so, whether by bandits or the police. Why then have there been so many massacres, in such a short period, in a small place and why do they continue up to the present day?

It is not without significance that the wave of massacres started when extra-judicial executions had already become so commonplace that they were the subject of critical investigation. In February 2002, the same month as the Mashramani prison escape, the Guyana Human Rights Association published its landmark “Ambivalent about Violence: A Report on Fatal Shooting by Police in Guyana, 1980-2001. This established the fact that, in 21 years, the police had killed 239 persons, nearly 80 per cent of whom belonged to one ethnic group. The next month, the United States Department of State released its scathing Report on Human Rights in Guyana, 2001, citing the extraordinarily large number of extra-judicial killings and the administration’s failure to conduct investigations into them.

The administration’s blas