(Reprinted from the Trinidad Sunday Express, February 24, 2008)
BC Pires: To Trinidadians, the wholesale murder in Guyana seems other-worldly; how are Guyanese coping?
Ian McDonald: Remember that the slaughter of 23 people in the attacks at Lusignan and Bartica are, proportionate to population, many times more horrific to Guyana then 9/11 was to America. And none of the 23 needed to be killed to get the gold and guns and money taken. And at Lusignan children were deliberately executed. I don’t think Trinidad has known anything like this.
BCP: Do people have the sense that it could happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone?
IMcD: People first of all feel a sense of revulsion. These attacks violate something representing the deepest layer of solidarity among all human begins. We have been visited by a pitiless cruelty and evil which are hard to measure in everyday human terms and, if allowed to continue, could change the basis for leading life as we know it in Guyana.
BCP: People are fearful, then?
IMcD: After utter revulsion, yes, fear is the overwhelming feeling. Perhaps it’s the ‘something other than human’ element which deepens the fear. But fear is pervasive. It is fear that such terror has happened before and now twice very quickly and fashioned with even more atrocious brutality so that this, whatever this is, may be coming to some sort of head like a huge abscess on the body of the nation about to burst.
BCP: Do people believe the police service will protect them?
IMcD: Fear is made worse by the feeling of helplessness. There seems so far no credible protection from government, police or army, despite all the promises of action and retribution. How can the police be expected to respond to the operations of a completely ruthless, relatively large – at least 20 in number – heavily armed and equipped (night-vision goggles were found at Lusignan) group acting more like well-organised and trained guerillas than ordinary criminals? The military must do the job and have been called in, but they have proved ineffective. They seem to lack motivation, accurate and secure intelligence and equipment – operational helicopters and speedboats for instance. They may be faced by elements including disaffected ex-military men as well trained and capable as themselves.
BCP: Are people considering self-help or vigilantism?
IMcD: People have been asking for guns to defend themselves. But the government’s efforts to organize community policing groups have not succeeded. Vigilante activity is not in evidence and certainly is not encouraged. This would be fraught with huge danger. It certainly could have no impact on operations like those at Lusignan and Bartica. And it could easily lead to completely unjustified retributive action taken to be racial and leading to a tit-for-tat descent into that hell which beckons societies which are divided by race, tribe or creed. On all sides of the official political spectrum, such activity is strenuously opposed. But who knows what fringe fanatics are seeking to exploit undoubted grievances, exacerbate sullen hatreds of actual or perceived political paramountcy and build on these by extreme acts a ” liberation movement” as they see it.
BCP: There were incidents at the African village of Buxton and the Indian village of Lusignan -but Bartica seems to have had no racial bias – is there a racial element at work?
IMcD: I want to go further than answering whether there is a racial element in these attacks, though it is sad for Guyana that such a question is an obvious one to ask. The larger question hovers in the air heavy with doom: what is this terrible, fateful phenomenon? What manifesto underlies it since none has been issued? Is this [merely], even if demented, criminality? But why then the stress, clearly intended to send some message, on brutal cruelty and not on material gain? Is this political? But the political parties, including the major opposition party, have unequivocally condemned the carnage. Is there perhaps some fringe or break-away splinter group responsible? But none has made itself known or expressed a rationale as such groups are wont to do. Is this connected to drugs in some way – at least by use in what seems to be the frenzied manner of some of the killings? But these attacks do not indicate any clash of drug groups for control of turf. Is this racial? That indeed is the question which is mostly asked. It certainly seemed so at Lusignan, but less so in Bartica, and not so in the recent past as far as body count could tell. But the suspicion remains strong – and those most fearful are Indians which itself is a fact that counts – and suspicion in a country with a history like Guyana’s can charge the air as dangerously as fact. There seems to be an element of nihilism in these acts – a wish to destroy and kill for the sake of destroying and killing, a rejection of all social organization and all morals, a desire to pull apart the fabric of society and politics as if leaving a waste might be better than what exists.
BCP: What can Guyana do?
IMcD: Somewhere up the road, yes, the underlying shaky foundation of the society must be given attention in line with the clich
