Dear Editor,
This letter is about two cases of struggles in Guyana without racial conflict.
There has not been much examination in public of the legal framework surrounding the events of July 18, 2012 in Linden, Guyana, and no discussion whatever of what happened on the 12th and 15th of August 2012. I am glad I did not grow up in such a dumbed-down atmosphere. My mother’s male and female school mates would have been visiting her, arguing, and chewing out the rightness and wrongness of the events, even and straight, as we say, with the lawyers, the editors, and the Commission and the readers. Mr Byron Lewis and Mr Yankee Jervis would have been at shop galleries and street corners questioning the mishandling of things. This was the atmosphere when the five workers were martyred at Enmore in 1948. Few households on the East Coast went to bed normally that night. Those were the days of Jagan in all his glory, before the PPP. There was DP Debidin, John Carter, Jainarine Singh, the British Guiana East Indian Association and the British Guiana League of Coloured Peoples, Dr Denbow and CML John and all the trade unions, the friendly societies expressing indignation and rallying to the defence of the victims. Burnham and Sugrim Singh were in England raising hell. No one except the Bookers gang called those giving solidarity to the victims enemies or disturbers of the peace. Village farmers carried on a ceaseless cross-examination of the state in hundreds of gatherings, and in knots of persons all over the coast. Ms Caroline Bourne, a Garveyite of Kitty took her Friendly and Burial Society colleagues, including Laurie de Jonge, a mystic, to Buxton for a memorial service. It was everybody’s grief, everybody’s case. Everyone would be asking about the reading of the Riot Act.
Fast, fast forward to 2012. In 1948 there was no Bill of Rights in Guyana. There was the English common law, as now. In 2012 the freedom of assembly was guaranteed by the constitution. The police in 1948 did not deny shooting. In 2012 the police told a Commission of Enquiry that they did not fire the fatal bullets. This was a new low for the police. Then the lawyer for the police submitted that the police were covered by a proclamation they read to the crowd under the Criminal Law (Offences) Act. The Guyana Chronicle had mentioned a proclamation in its second report. The person reading was a justice of the peace because all officers of the police force are JPs.
The government acted under provisions which came from a 1715 British law. The colonial authority received that law and the two major parties in government modified and revised it. The Guyana version of the law speaks of logies and plantations, and is loaded with backward notions. It is not one of the better, old laws. However, it is on the statute books and in force. For the first time since shooting by the police began, the police in 2012 denied shooting the fatal bullets. But yet there was no manhunt for the alleged phantoms. In 1948 they could account for every bullet.
In 2012 that was not possible. They could not account for tear smoke instruments. Even the police lead counsel had to ask, “Where are the missing nine ?” Worse than that, there is the peril to guarantees given in the fundamental rights of our fundamental law, the constitution.
Many readers will know that while the constitution brought rights, it also ‘saved’ old laws that offended those rights. The question is whether a law that is clearly out of tune with the fundamental rights, and ‘saved’ by the constitution, can then be used as superior to the fundamental rights provisions. This issue is posed by those parts of Chapter 8:01 when read with Articles 147 and 150. If Article 150 means anything, it lays down the circumstances under which the right to freedom of assembly and association and other rights may be violated by force. Even in those extreme circumstances, Article 150 does not seem to sacrifice the right to life.
What are these circumstances that permit suspension of certain fundamental rights?
Article 150 sets them out:
(a) When Guyana is at war; (b) when there is a proclamation in force; and (c) when
there is a resolution of the National Assembly stating that the democratic institutions of Guyana are in danger.
The constitution defines “proclamation” as the “proclamation of emergency” by the president. A state of emergency declared by the chief executive must be printed in the Official Gazette. It endures and has force for a limited time. After that it may be renewed by the National Assembly. With the Assembly’s consent it can be in force for up to two years.
Citizens who had applied for permission, and declared that they would exercise their right to protest for five days, were treated as “riotous and tumultuous” on the very first day. We heard of the attempt to arrest any lawbreaker.
In deciding how to deal with the situation in Linden in 2012, the rulers of Guyana treated the activity not as protest but as crime. The government’s own statement to the OAS said that the “rampage” began after the shooting.
If we have two standards for “hindering” persons without their “own consent” in their right to freedom of assembly and one standard is some law and the other is the fundamental rights of the constitution, which is the guiding standard ?
Readers should not worry that I am not learned in the law. The government’s lawyers are free to show where I am wrong and teach the population what is right.
There are circumstances needing further probing. The Minister, who took the oath of office, gave the media a reason why he could not have talked to Linden on July 18. Phone records demanded by the victims’ lawyer showed that the minister was attempting to deceive the nation. The only public figure to comment on this deception was Mr Frederick Kissoon. Minister Rohee spoke to an officer after the shooting. That officer had also denied having a conversation that day − in a matter involving lives, law and the constitution. The President has affirmed confidence in a minister who attempted a brazen public deception. The point is not whether he ordered the shooting. The point is that he misrepresented the facts and the President has knowingly protected him from a no-confidence vote which he earned.
Where is our customary solidarity with the victims of repression?
Article 150 is part of the supreme law. It guards against “riotous” government. Uphold it, or repeal it!
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
