Waiting for justice

Dear Editor,
I am the mother of Navin Serrão who was murdered on Thomas Road, Thomas Lands on June 7, 2007. I want to thank Stabroek News for publishing my recent letter. There are some important things I forgot to mention. His father, who was a former police officer, died in August this year due to grief for his son. He had some health issues, but he was okay up to the time before his son died. I feel owing to the grief and stress of losing his first-born, his health deteriorated and he succumbed to his illness. If I had been having health problems, I might have gone too. But I’m a strong person and I have to keep strong for the rest of my family.

My son was conceived a little time after the Jonestown massacre, and his father was transferred to the police station there. He was stationed at the Alberttown police station before this. He left the police force because he was haunted by all those restless souls there. I know that if he was still in the police force, he would have hunted down his son’s murderers and we would have gotten justice. But even if we got justice, it can’t bring back my son and we will always be in grief till our day comes to be reunited with him. Everyone knows that when a member of the police family is murdered, they hunt down the killers to get justice. But I know that we will get justice even if the police can’t give it to us and the many other families who are depending on them to protect and serve the citizens of Guyana. What goes around comes around, and all the murderers of innocent souls will have to pay because the evil you do lives after you. Anyway, we are not depending on the police for justice because they have a backlog of cases that they can’t solve, and other families are still waiting for justice from way back and can’t get any.

We will just have to take a seat and wait our turn, as one blogger said. I also want to thank all the bloggers in the comments section for offering their sympathy. I read the news every day on the internet so I know what’s going on in my beloved country. We in the diaspora love Guyana, but sad to say, the crime situation is making people run. I must say, I live in a very decent state where crime is at a minimum. I walk the streets at any hour and no one bothers me. I want to thank the police for trying to solve these cases but they need more intelligence and professionalism. Some day we will all be reunited with our loved ones.

One more thing I want to say to the police is that they got wrong information concerning mistaken identity. Due to words that were spoken in the burial ground −  “He did do what he had to do and is not time for faith now. Is time for the man to go home.” Those words keep ringing in my ears and to me they mean that he did something to be murdered like that. I did not go into the ground but if I had gone there, I would have asked the person who said them what he meant by those words. I heard it from someone who was there.

Anyway I will leave all of those involved to their karma. I also want to thank Ms Heppilena Ferguson for her article and Stabroek News for exposing injustice in our beautiful Guyana. Keep up the good work guys.

I will close off by sending condolences to all the families of loved ones who died tragically, especially Alicia Foster who was a family friend and Akila Jacobs, the pretty journalist who’s gone and left her baby. I wish them comfort and peace in their bereavement.
Yours faithfully,
Debra Serrão