Dear Editor,
Unless we are fair in observing and remarking on the pattern of violence in Guyana, or anywhere for that matter, we shall make little progress.
After my public statement that I had not seen the report of the Phantom Commission of Enquiry, I received one by mail from a friend. I am now reading it.
The evidence given to the Commission seems to explain the evidence not given to the commission. I am reading evidence of persons who saw incidents before one or two executions.
What I sense from this distance, in the killing of Ms King, said to be sister of a vigilante chief and the killing of the man in Laing Avenue is that they have the footprint, not of the Buxton based gunmen but of the Phantom.
I should add that your paper made this observation and that it had also been my independent impression. I went back to the evidence and read it, forming the same opinion. And yet, as an observer fresh from Guyana says, it may not be the Phantom, but what she suspects as a breed taking root, contract killers.
Can it be that while some people are sitting and discussing means of ending the disgraceful violence from any quarter, there is some hypocrisy, or else there is what Mr Norman Semple of the Guyana Public Service Union many years ago called “a second command” ?
The most recent shooting of 46-year-old Mr Trevor Pollard at Buxton Friendship has dropped out of the news, There was “only” one fatal shooting by the police. The police statement as reported records a historic circumstance, worthy of a place in the police museum along with the exhibits.
Regarding this incident, there was the report of several security men searching the trench for evidence that Pollard who crossed the trench, had been armed. Then two new arrivals plunged into the trench and found two bullets.
A trench bottom is not like that . It is mostly mud. Walking about in the trench bottom will tend to bury anything made of metal. It is not as though these things will float in a trench. Those men jumped in the trench just in time to find the .32 bullets, and a bit more possibly, a revolver.
Next, the printed reports from more than one observer stated that once again a man who had surrendered was shot and killed. So does this mean that surrender is no longer an option for a suspect or for a person just running from trouble? What do we mean by the right to life? Why is there such a determination to kill all suspects? Is it for fear that they may know too much? How is this superior to what the gunmen do?
The press can say on what date the police announced that Pollard was wanted for the killing of a soldier. Too many, far too many likely sources of information about real or felt grievances, about the experience of the disturbances have been just silenced with gunfire. We are left with archives of allegations, including those I believe, and speculation. The killing of potential witnesses extends directly from Andrew Douglas to George Bacchus and Axel Williams. On opposite sides of the conflict, even Troy Dick, who was the last survivor of the five escaped prisoners, and who, it was believed, had been inactive but out of hiding for years, has gone to his grave without a word.
Part of this is due to the fact that the government when pressed to include the East Coast in the terms of reference for the Gajraj Phantom inquiry, refused to include it, while boasting of the evidence in its possession. The Phantom Inquiry report deserves attention.
We need a special enquiry into why counsel for the commission did or did not advise the calling of particular witnesses and why the commission itself did not call them.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
