Several schoolchildren were affected yesterday after police used tear gas to break up the demonstrations by residents of several East Coast Deme-rara villages who continued to protest the lack of security in their areas following the weekend murders of 11 people including five children at Lusignan.
But by nightfall, the intense protest action had subsided and although there were crowds, the police who were out in full force were keeping order.
Yesterday morning, angry residents upped the tempo on their protest, scattering nails and hurling glass bottles on the road as police struggled to contain them.
Eventually the police released tear gas near a private school at Market Street, Mon Repos, which resulted in several students being rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Blocking the roads and setting at least two fires, more than 200 angry residents lined a section of the Lusignan Public road and another large group converged at Mon Repos. Protestors continued to demand better protection from criminal elements and vowed to continue their protest until they hear from the government, exactly how it plans to capture the perpetrators of the Saturday morning barbaric act.
“We want [President Bharrat] Jagdeo to come and tell us about a detailed plan about how they plan to address the issue of the criminals in the Annandale/Buxton Backdam. There are good people living in Buxton and it is not fair to them too. He has to tell us now what they will do. We done get enough sympathy,” an Annandale resident who preferred to remain anonymous, told this newspaper.
When Stabroek News arrived at Lusignan just after 9 am yesterday, residents were gathered on both sides of the road. They hurled insults at police. “If you all did come in so much numbers when awe did call you all, we wouldn’t had so much dead people,” one woman shouted at a policeman who pleaded with her and others to behave themselves.
However, it was no easy task for the police to monitor the behaviour of the residents, who continued, at every chance they got, to throw debris onto the streets.
At one time, a man ran into the middle of the road and pretended to have an injured foot. The policeman, who tried to hurry him back into the corner, did so without touching the man who was being cheered on by other protestors.
Many of them also hurled racist insults at officers who appeared obviously constrained, even when they were victims of presumptuous jostling.
Close to 100 uniformed police officers were on the scene yesterday morning and even as they thought they had control of the protestors, another group was forming in the vicinity of the Mon Repos Market.
Police as well as ranks from the Guyana Fire service were tasked with cleaning the roads and as fast as they got their jobs completed, protestors added more debris, broken from market stalls, and bottles to the road creating more blocks and forced several vehicles to seek alternative routes.
‘It is for him to
do the thinking’
A small group of men who looked on, told Stabroek News that they were not satisfied with the meeting which they had with the President over the weekend.
One of the men, who preferred to identify himself as “a resident of Annandale” said, “He hasn’t given us any comforting solutions. All he wanted to do is hear from us what we think he should do. But why does he think we put him there? It is for him to do the thinking.”
The men said that the time being taken for the police to stay in their area to maintain order, should be spent going after the criminals. “Sending the police and soldiers here is in no way adequate,” one opined.
Another member of the group said the President listened to their concerns very carefully, but noted that he felt that if the police suspected that the bandits were hiding out in the cane fields, the only alternative was for them to clear the fields even if it meant forsaking the farms and sugarcane plants.
The men said they felt that it was important for them to continue burning tyres and keeping the police busy because they felt it was a way of getting them to open their eyes and do their job responsibly.
“And we are not only blaming the police because they can’t operate alone. We want the authorities to res-pond appropriately to our situation. We are not protesting to harm anyone, but enough is enough,” he insisted.
That resident said he had believed that after Agriculture Minister Satyadeow Sawh and then the five Kaieteur News pressmen were brutally murdered, government would have taken a stronger approach to tackling crime in Guyana. “But no, now 11, something has got to be done,” he said.
A Mon Repos resident who shared the view that something ought to be done with seven to eight miles of backlands, insisted that the protest had nothing to do with race and that their intention was not to create any racial tension, but they wanted an admission that the criminals seemed to be selecting their targets carefully.
“This ain’t got nothing to do with no one group. We are all Guyanese, but we must see that these men choosing who they will attack. We want all east coast residents to come out in this struggle, because we pay our taxes and we must be protected,” the man insisted.
Arrests
Police later arrested about four men after they sought to prevent a fifth man who was clearing debris from the roadway.
As the day progressed, a man had attempted to move some of the debris blocking the roadway at Mon Repos but received a hostile reaction from residents. After he had dragged away some of the debris blocking the road, residents put them back and confronted him.
The man, seemingly unaware of the high emotions engulfing the crowd, attempted to argue with them but was drowned out by the angry shouts of the enraged residents who pelted him with glass bottles and other debris.
As a menacing group of persons, armed with pieces of wood and other implements, advanced, the man slowly retreated but the residents rushed to him and with hostile shouts, hit him several times with the pieces of wood. As the barrage intensified, the man was forced to flee.
The police turned up shortly after and the man returned and identified a few of the persons, who hit him and the police took them into custody.
Prisoners were then taken to the East Coast to assist the police in clearing the debris from the roadway and residents turned their attention to them. “Wha y’all helping them foh?” one questioned, to which a prisoner responded: “We wukking foh de same thing