The rising tide of trafficking in illegal narcotics and firearms over the last decade brought waves of criminal violence to this country. The consequences have been a ghastly reputation for an annual average of two mass murders over the past six years and a gory record of two murders on average every six days. Are Guyanese gradually growing accustomed to a bloodbath of murders and unnatural deaths?
The Guyana Police Force’s recent reports of a surge in serious crime – particularly gang-related violence and organised narcotics and firearms trafficking – point to increases in execution-murders, domestic murders, disorderly murders and mass murders.
At least from the time of the live, prime-time, television spectacle of the shooting down of a suspect by the police in Eccles in February 2000, the impression that human life and the rule of law had little value has been seared into the public mind. Violent armed gangs spawned by the Mashramani prison escape in 2002 contributed most to the high toll of murders during the troubles on the East Coast that also claimed the lives of a score of policemen.
The dozen massacres – in Kitty at Nathoo’s bar; Lamaha Gardens; Bourda on Diwali night; in Buxton-Friendship; Prashad Nagar; Agricola-Eccles; La Bonne Intention; Bagotstown-Eccles; Black Bush Polder; Lusignan; Bartica; and Lindo Creek – indicate how commonplace multiple killings have become.
Law in the huge hinterland west of the Essequibo River, where bandits rob and kill miners and often settle disputes with gunfire, is enforced lightly. Along the coast and in the estuaries of the great rivers, murders by pirates still occur, as evidenced by the occasional floating ashore of the bound and brutalised bodies of fishermen. Rural rape-murders; ‘friendly’ fatal stabbings among drunken revellers in rum shops; house-burnings; and murder-suicides, in all of which assailants seem to be familiar with their victims, suggest a distressing social collapse.
The killing of a would-be star witness in a murder case was emblematic of the employment of execution-murder to obstruct the course of justice. The unspeakable thuggery of the so-called ‘phantom squads’ remains uninvestigated. The several killings of suspects in ‘confrontations’ with the police and joint services seem to have become normalised as the collateral consequences of law enforcement actions.
The Guyana Human Rights Association’s landmark study – Ambivalent about Violence: A Report on Fatal Shooting by Police in Guyana, 1980-2001 – established the fact that, in 21 years, the police had killed 239 persons, an average of over 11 persons per annum, during both the course of the PNC and PPP administrations. The period covered by that study stopped before the East Coast troubles started. The images of the bodies of victims flung onto the floors of police wagons or, as in Bartica, stacked like animal carcasses into an open boat, suggest a cynical lack of respect by officials even for human remains.
The question to be asked is whether there is growing acceptance of extreme, violent, criminal conduct that is becoming more prevalent, claiming such large numbers of victims and persisting into the present time in such a small population?
In the final analysis, the public expects the police to enforce the law in a lawful manner, and the courts to hold inquests to examine the circumstances surrounding unlawful killings. It is the administration’s duty to protect the public from the scourge of murder by an underworld dominated by drugs and guns. Killings have become commonplace owing as much to the criminality of nihilistic bandits and sadistic ‘phantom’ squads as to the incapacity of those who have failed to bring them to justice.
