Buxtonians who say they are being ill-treated and criminalised by the Joint Services formed a delegation and visited Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green yesterday to air their grievances and plead for immediate relief.
Spewing allegations that members of the Joint Services are harassing everyone from the elderly to children; arresting women and children; brutalising young men and slapping false charges on many in the community, the group said things might escalate and reach the stage where peaceful citizens in Buxton would have no choice but to defend themselves.
Close to 20 residents, among them three teenagers, sat with Green at City Hall and related their personal stories. The residents said many others in the besieged village are concerned at the actions of the Joint Services but are afraid to speak publicly. They said that if everyone took such a position, what was happening in Buxton would never come to light.
“We fed up, fed up and somehow this has gat to stop,” one resident said. “What going on in Buxton gat to stop, they can’t stay in there and keep treating people like this. The whole of Guyana must know that helpless Buxtonians suffering.” She went to City Hall with a written statement detailing her experiences with the Joint Services.
Stating that there was no justice for Buxtonian women anymore, she said they were being raped spiritually. This particular point was echoed throughout the morning by the women who spoke, with many saying that the Joint Services was trying to break their spirits.
Green, after listening to the cries of the villagers, said he would prepare a report and submit it to the Commissioner of Police (ag) Henry Greene and Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee urging them to bring an end to the abuse. He told the residents to be patient and to go back home and pray about it.
In the gathering yesterday was 15-year-old Marlena Chapman, who said she was locked up for two days after being picked up by the Joint Services along with 16 others while out on an errand for her mother on Monday last. The teenager who attends Bladen Hall Secondary School recounted how she was thrown into the back of a vehicle and taken to Vigilance Police Station before being transported to Police Head-quarters, Eve Leary where she was photographed, fingerprinted and booked. Though no one told her what she was being detained for, the teenager said, she was instructed to wear a tag with the letters ‘RUA’ and was then photographed. According to her, she later discovered that RUA means Robbery Under Arms.
After being processed, the girl said, she was taken to the East La Penitence station where she spent two days before being released into her mother’s custody. She is to report to the police later this month. The experience was “not nice and very scary”, according to the teenager who is still confused as to why she was arrested.
Her mother, Sharon Rodney, who was also present yesterday, said she was just happy to have her daughter home and safe. The woman said she did intend to pursue the police and press them for an explanation but she preferred to go as part of a larger group.
Another young woman from Buxton, Thandi Smith, spoke of how was made to sit in a police vehicle and face a barrage of questions about wanted man, Rondel ‘Fine-man” Rawlins. The woman said Joint Services officers repeatedly asked whether she knew Rawlins and though she answered in the negative every time, they kept pressuring her. She said the persons questioning her then got abusive and attacked her character.
“People must be feel we making things up but this is what they say to we, they tell me these things and they threatening we everyday,” Smith said.
23 years of service
Ex-police officer and elections official, Dawn King walked into the meeting shortly after it started and announced that she had just been released from the East La Penitence lock-ups. She was arrested on Thursday last and spent the weekend in prison. The woman said her only crime was her frankness and stated that after 23 years of service to the country as a police officer, she was treated like a common criminal.
King said she was arrested, booked for robbery under arms, fingerprinted and photographed without any allegation being made.
She related the incidents that led to her being arrested, declaring that she refused to be silent when injustices were being meted out to persons around her. King said she was released on $5,000 station bail and is required to report to the police on Friday.
The woman said she served the force faithfully and only came off the job when she was deemed medically unfit.
“I have seen all manner of things happening in my village. They are pinning our children to every murder being committed. They are ill-treating us women and our children. They are trying to strip us of our hope but God is in charge and all is well. A day will come when all this will end,” King lamented.
Since her encounter with the Joint Services, King said, she has a different view of it.
Patrice King, who spoke briefly, said Joint Services officers have been disrespectful, brutal and unprofessional within the past few weeks. He said they some Buxtonians were afraid that things would escalate to the point where women and young girls would no longer be safe in their homes. He said that many men in the community usually received phone calls everyday that their daughters or their wives who were at home were picked up or harassed while they were away at work.
He said that the religious groups have been notably silent with respect to the treatment being shown to persons in the area.
Two other men from the area, one of them who identified himself as Sheldon Campbell, said they were picked up, questioned about Fineman and released after much harassment.
One said the Joint Services searched his home and found two army blankets that they were given as part of the flood relief efforts in 2005 and made a big issue out of them. He said that if the army wanted its blankets back, it can have them but to suggest he and his family were criminals was too much.
