The Guyana Human Rights Asso-ciation yesterday said that a new initiative is needed to resolve the crisis in Linden and it argued that responsibility for all of the mayhem suffered by civilians in the mining town rests on the government.
The human rights group said that the indiscriminate and excessive use of tear-gas and rubber bullets by the police force against Linden civilians was unjustified and provocative.
“Direct or indirect responsibility for all of the mayhem suffered by the civilian population rests squarely on the shoulders of the Government”, the GHRA declared, noting that the decision to mount a massive military exercise last week generated unnecessary tension and an environment in which protestors reasonably felt that an operation was about to commence.
“To this extent the joint services operation was provocative. Since there is no evidence that national security interests were threatened, the justification for a joint services intervention needs to be explained”, the GHRA said. It added that the escalation of the Linden crisis was attributable to “major miscalculations” by the government about the support among ordinary citizens in the town for the blockade and the human rights group also floated the view that greater representation from Lindeners in the negotiating team would have dispelled any doubt about this at the bargaining table.
Noting that the President and the ruling party had referred to those blockading the bridge as extremists, the GHRA said “The fact is the great majority of the Linden community supported the blockade, as demonstrated by the numbers on the street over the past few days. Had the negotiating team been rooted more in the Linden residents Stakeholder Group, rather than simply communicating with them, this illusion could have been eradicated across the negotiating table.”
Similarly, it said that the leader of the negotiating team Mr Sharma Solomon would not have had to resort to letters to the press clarifying his position.
GHRA also posited that clearer representation would have made pellucid that majority support for the blockade was tied to the withdrawal of the electricity tariff rather than any of the other issues on the negotiating table.
It added that the Linden crisis is another example of the serious defect in the local political system where persons elected to office “are more accountable to centralized leadership than to the people who elected them.”
GHRA warned that using the military to clear the roadways may be attainable in the short run but was not sustainable.
“While clearing the roadways by military pacification of Linden may be achievable in the short term, it is clearly unsustainable and reckless and also threatens to engulf the society.
The notion that this is not a Joint Service operation is a fiction. Although the TSU/Riot Squad are firing the tear-gas and bullets and harassing the general population, it is the presence of the army which is sustaining this behaviour”, the GHRA contended.
