The PNCR is expressing alarm that its members are being targeted by the police for `flimsy’ arrests and has stated that “it will not sit idly by and allow elements of the Guyana Police Force to trample on the human and constitutional rights of its supporters and other citizens”.
In a release last night the PNCR said that because of recent events in which its members were arrested without reasonable cause, it has summoned a meeting of its members and supporters to discuss the recent developments and to determine its future action.
The party said that the arrests appeared to have assumed a particular pattern after the massacres at Lusignan after which Public Service Minister, Dr Jennifer Westford made accusations, inside and outside of parliament, that persons, under the guise of distributing toys last Christmas, had done a reconnaissance of the area.
Shortly after the accusation, a member of the GECOM staff at Buxton, Dawn King who had distributed toys in Sophia and other areas, was arrested. Last week, a PNCR scrutineer, Odessa Moore, was arrested at Ithaca along with her 14-year-old sister. As has become usual they were detained for the statutory period and later released without being charged, the party said.
PNCR General Secretary Oscar Clarke told Stabroek News that Moore was accused of harbouring someone carrying a duffel bag in her house. He said they told her that her house was under surveillance and they saw when the persons entered. They searched her house but did not find anyone or the bag and took her and her sister into custody.
The release noted too that PNCR candidate, on the party’s list for the 2006 general and regional elections, Ramrattie Jagdeo, who lives in the street at Lusignan in which the massacre occurred was arrested on March 7, 2008 during the day and taken to Eve Leary, allegedly, on the basis of an altercation with a neighbour over differences of political opinion expressed in October 2007. He said that Jagdeo was accused by a neighbour of bringing Buxton gunmen on the community even though her own relatives were gunned down in the massacre and she too was under threat since her house was on the same street that was attacked. He said he learnt of the attack from Jagdeo.
Reporting the following morning, she was detained based on the October 2007 report involving her neighbour. While attempting to call her lawyer, PNCR Leader Robert Corbin told the Stabroek News, the police took away her cell phone and they found an image of 2 hand guns on the wallpaper. When asked about the images, she explained that her daughters had installed the image.
Corbin said the police then detained her two daughters, aged 11 and 15 and threatened to place them in the lock-ups at East La Penitence Police station that same evening. They were going to sleep in the lock-ups but he and attorney at law and PNCR executive member Basil Williams intervened. The girls, he said, obtained the images from two boys whom the police also arrested and were at Eve Leary last evening. He said that one of the boys explained that he got the images from a policeman.
The 15-year-old daughter, Corbin said is a student of a leading city secondary school and she had tests to write this week. He said she was completely shattered because of an image that was in a cell phone that she had taken from a school mate. “This is the height of ridiculousness,” Corbin said, “arresting a lot of children.”
The party, Corbin said would do all in its power to ensure adequate representation for them and take whatever other measures are necessary to prevent the further violations of those rights, he said.
He recalled too that on the morning after the Lusignan killings, President Bharrat Jagdeo, had pointed an accusing finger at former army officer Oliver Hinckson even before he had received the first reports from the security forces on the massacre. Hinckson and another former army officer Dorian Massay were arrested and placed before the courts yesterday.
The PNCR release said that these recent developments would be harmful to winning the confidence and trust of all national stakeholders, to reach agreement on a holistic solution to the security and crime situation facing the nation. The national stakeholders meeting on security is due to be convened today.
Expressing alarm, the party said that it would appear that the police seem to have come under the central political direction and control of the ruling political establishment and that their activities and other security forces were being manipulated to ensure a desired political outcome.
The PNCR said it has always given full support to the security forces to apprehend anyone who has broken the laws of the country and has repeated this position after the Lusignan and Bartica massacres. However, the party said it was appalled at the recent actions of the security forces in which Guyanese citizens, including those associated with the PNCR, have been arrested and incarcerated, often on the flimsiest of pretexts.
“These acts are highly provocative, in the face of the deteriorating security situation in Guyana and do not augur well for its speedy resolution,” the PNCR said.
