In the wake of Monday’s robbery and assault of a family of four outside the Sheriff Night Club, the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) is calling for the immediate suspension of the club’s licence until investigations are completed and the perpetrators arrested.
The body will hold a one-hour vigil outside the nightclub tomorrow from 12 to 1 pm and is inviting all concerned persons to join.
Referring to the robbing, stripping and sexual abuse of the women as a complete outrage, GHRA said, the night club has to accept responsibility for not intervening in the violence and not calling the police.
“Nightclub staff must have been alerted to potential trouble by the initial altercation involving the split drink which set in motion all that followed. Similarly, the exodus of the gang after the family left could not have gone unnoticed. Allowing the perpetrators to return to the nightclub was inexcusable,” GHRA noted.
GHRA said the Guyana Police Force needs to explain how on earth an incident of such magnitude occurred without police intervention in the most concentrated night-life area in the country, particularly after months of security planning for Cricket World Cup. More importantly, the body pointed out that there must be effective action from the force to apprehend the perpetrators of the incident.
According to the GHRA, the incident should be a turning point because the victims in question are Amerindians while the younger girl who bore the brunt of the attack along with her mother is just 16 years old.
“The GHRA does not view the Amerindian dimension of the incident as coincidental. A recent publication revealed that young Amerindian women are among the most vulnerable in the country to rape and sexual assault,” the statement said. The statement called on organisations concerned with women, Amerindians, tourism, human rights, children, trade unions and religious bodies to sustain a systematic campaign ag-ainst the club so as to send a warning of similar action to other nightspots disposed to tolerate such behaviour.
Further, the body said, Amerindian NGOs in conjunction with the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs and Amerindian residents in Georgetown should be in the forefront of developing measures of protection for all Amerindians, particularly female Amerindians in Georgetown.
GHRA said too that the taxi driver who required payment by earrings from the robbed and assaulted women to take them to the hospital should be named and publicly shamed for “his unspeakable barbarism”.
Early Monday morning the family had just left the Sheriff Street nightspot and had boarded a taxi when the gang descended on them and in full view of the public assaulted, beat and robbed them before walking calmly away. Minutes before that occurred the lone male in the group had accidentally spilled a drink on a group of men and the men demanded he replace it with extra. He refused to buy extra drinks.
When the family left the nightclub, the men followed them outside and pulled them out of a taxi. They pulled guns, broke a bottle, stabbed the male in the group and assaulted two of the women.
According to the family, many persons were on Sheriff Street at the time but no one rendered any assistance. After they were robbed, beaten and assaulted, the family stopped a taxi to go to the hospital and the man demanded money before making the trip. One of the women took off her earrings and paid him with that.
Police are investigating.
