Dear Editor,
Narcotics detective Jirbahan Dianand is executed and there is a heavy, telltale silence. The only sounds heard are the laments from his grief-stricken family suddenly alone with sharp, piercing misery. The larger silence speaks of so much, of so many, and about the presence of surging collective guilt.
The Guyana Police Force is silent, when it should be outraged at the loss of one of its own, and one who might have made a difference. And which is so desperately needed.
Society is silent, as it retreats into numbness and horror at yet another killing that is clinical, efficient, and sends all kinds of messages. The political players are silent, too. It is the same ones who give aid and comfort to the arrivistes and investors, and the dirty rich. Those with big cars, bigger buildings, and immeasurable reach who make such deaths possible.
This fallen sentinel stands as brute testimony to the bloodied hands of those who have mingled with the evil that is now a national scourge. It is a scourge that nurtures every conceivable form of corruption, criminality, and peril.
What will those who have huddled with the purveyors of death and devastation, who have protected them, shared with them say now? What is there left to say? By extension, they are part of the fateful firing apparatus that emptied the lifeblood from Jirbahan Dianand. Just as the lifeblood of this country is thinned and drained without interruption in the craven pursuit of sordid riches.
Not too long ago, the killing of a police officer was tantamount to a declaration of war, and the police marshalled and escalated in kind. And it was not so long ago that I raised publicly the provocative, but realistic, question as to the existence of a single honest cop in this state.
I believe that Detective Dianand answered that question in the most persuasive manner, and in the best of lights. Now his own light has been extinguished. Perhaps there are those who walked alongside him who will follow his altogether rare example.
To those who encouraged the conditions that made such a death possible, there is no shield, no battlement, no debate, no alibi, no words that can shelter from either responsibility or culpability. Now Jirbahan Dianand moves on. He goes home on his shield. His duty done, his conscience clear, his character unimpaired. But what about the rest of us? Can we say the same?
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
