Dear Editor,
I was dismayed at the headline in Sunday February 24 Kaieteur News “Police release photos of Buxton gang members”; here we go again, linking Buxton to any and every serious criminal activity. Do the journalists or authorities know for a fact that these ‘gunmen’ are from Buxton?
What were the criteria used to determine that? Were they born in Buxton? Do they live in Buxton? If so why not go to their home addresses? Given that four have aliases and one is unknown, how do the police know that they’re from Buxton? In what way are they marked out as Buxtonians as the headline implies?
If I were to stretch credibility and be charitable to Kaieteur News I could conclude that in the rush to sensationalise their story they have inadvertently stirred up further antipathy towards the beleaguered people of Buxton. I however suspect a darker agenda at play, after all the mistreatment and abuse meted out to the people of Buxton has been aired in a number of quarters. It seems open season has well and truly been declared upon Buxton. Let’s look at some recent events:- A heavily pregnant teenager is apparently kidnapped. No one in authority seems willing or able to do much about this.
A fifteen-year-old school girl is arrested and detained for three days. Young children are being picked up and threatened by personnel from the joint services. Women complain of harassment from the joint services personnel
A Rastafarian is arrested and bundled into a pickup. He is assaulted and has his locks cut off by the Joint Services.Property is destroyed, farmlands are bulldozed, houses are raided without warrants. Dawn King, an ex police officer with twenty-four years service, is arrested and detained. Her crime? Speaking up for the human rights and dignity of the people of Buxton. Joint services personnel allegedly threaten to shoot her husband.
People are being routinely ‘arrested’ and subjected to horrendous treatment by the joint services. This is not policing, this is terrorism. What has Buxton done to deserve this?
Everyone should be afforded the protection of the state; a person is innocent until proven guilty, to criminalise an entire community for the alleged transgression of a few is illegal and morally reprehensible. It is akin to the tactics used by the Gestapo in World War Two under the Nazis. It is a form of collective ‘Waterboarding’.
It is therefore time for the PNCR to openly take to the streets in support of the many, many decent hard-working people of Buxton and to protest against the Gestapo-like tactics of the joint services aided and abetted by the PPP regime against the law abiding people of Buxton.
Yours faithfully,
Colin Bascom
Editor’s note
We never received the press release on which the report in the Kaieteur News was based and both the police and the army deny issuing any such release so it is not clear where it emanated from or whether it refers to the men in the photographs as being from Buxton. A Chronicle display of the same photographs on Saturday, February 23 indicated that the men were wanted by the police but did not say where they came from.
