Dear Editor,
Just about every clear-thinking Guyanese strongly suspected that there was a death squad prowling around unchecked. As the deadly incidents mounted over the years, suspicion hardened into near immovable conviction as to the presence of such a group. After this, the questions flow fairly easily.
Is there only one death squad in town? Is the death squad (also labelled elsewhere as a ‘killing machine’) allegedly with police roots distinct from commercial squads? Are shooters interchangeable ‒ on loan, for hire ‒ meaning that they wear different hats on different occasions, and answer to different commanders?
In terms of masterminds, intellectual authors, or godfathers, it must be said that death squads neither spring full-grown, like Minerva, into instant life, nor do they function in a vacuum. Whatever the motive ‒ profit, politics, competition, or criminal vision ‒ these outfits dedicated to murder always trace higher and higher, no matter how compartmentalized.
Additionally, and as I wrote about ten years ago, there is no vestige of patriotism or altruism, to any degree, in their heinous deeds; they are not defensible. Their members execute for a purpose, on specific orders, and assume the embodiment of mindless automatons doing as directed. After the first killing, it becomes progressively easier, until new liquidations mean nothing at all.
Having pointed out that death squads (including local ones) do not operate on autopilot, it is time to table a few more questions. Who did this one kill for? Who was powerful enough (if accurate) to move senior police officials to partner and participate in the local killing fields? And what was the guise tendered in smoky, ramshackle mitigation?
I recall that ubiquitous, soothing phrase “national security” from way back and high up. I think that the linkages are obvious (given the names bandied about) and that the trail goes way up there, real high. Those are dots waiting to be connected and begging for comprehension.
As to why the public confession and the timing, I could not care less. It is enough that this corroborates the claims of so-called ‘crime-fighting’ and the lethal results publicly lauded by the then powers a decade ago. Except that today, crime-fighting is inexorably encircled by the wafting, thickening aroma of serious criminality. Today, some things are increasingly undeniable.
Last, I read of men claiming that they would not be so stupid or insane to embark on certain courses of action. Perhaps. I say that wiser men have been intoxicated by the hubris of their own believed infallibility, and the untraceable, untouchable nature of their clandestine conduct. Sometimes, the best of us are too smart for our own good, and it returns to haunt with a vengeance. Indeed, recklessness lays low the mighty, the careless, and the contemptuous.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
