Dear Editor,
Allow me to express my deepest condolences to the family and relatives of those hard-working miners, slaughtered on June 21, 2008, at the Lindo camp location. Their gruesome, barbaric and inexplicable deaths only remind us of how dangerously fragile life has become in our beloved land. Our internal security appears to be so compromised, that we seem not to be safe anywhere, from the low coastal plain to the interior savannahs – or basically in any corner of our 83,000 square miles. Within the last six years Guyanese have witnessed some of the most outrageous, unthinkable and brutal killings. These were crimes that we would regard as alien to this country, from beheading to back-to-back massacres and now to hacking, shooting and burning to death. We must now ask ourselves how much worse can this nightmare get and how much longer can a nation go through this pain.
As if to add insult to injury, the nation now has to grapple with the controversy over who executed those eight men at Lindo Creek. It is bad enough that there are marauding gunmen on the loose creating havoc, but it is even scarier to contemplate that members of the disciplined forces could be implicated in any way in this slaughter. These are dangerous and serious revelations which must be urgently and impartially investigated so that some level of credibility can be quickly restored to the organisations created to serve and protect the people of Guyana. At a time when there is desperate need for cooperation between the citizenry and the disciplined forces we cannot treat such allegations as mere wild statements. Those in authority must take cognisance of how serious this allegation is, and the fact that it may further exacerbate the already alarming security situation in the country. For the sake of the nation good sense must prevail, and political hardball must retreat. These claims can only go away once we are able to negate them by conducting a fair investigation. The people of Guyana deserve this much. Unless the security forces are vindicated through this means, Guyanese confidence in their credibility is likely further to dip, thereby making it difficult to fight crime, since cooperation between the two is likely to suffer.
I therefore urge the Commander-in-Chief, President Jagdeo to swiftly deal with this matter so there can be some kind of closure. There are already allegations of torture committed by ranks of the Guyana Defence Force on citizens, and we are still awaiting the results of those investigations, despite the fact the report was completed months ago. It is therefore not enough to just rebuff the latest allegations by stating that they are outrageous; officers in the area at the time must be vindicated by an impartial investigation. The security forces and the nation deserve nothing less.
I wish to close by asking that there be a national day of mourning for the miners. The mining industry has been a major backbone of the economy of our country; let us show solidarity and support for the families of those slain and for the entire mining industry. No doubt, the untimely deaths of these hard-working Guyanese will have an impact on the overall socio-economic situation in Guyana, but we must console ourselves with the fact that we are a resilient people who still hope for better days.
May God continue to keep us strong, and sustain the tolerance we are known to exhibit in these times of tremendous challenge!
Yours faithfully,
Lurlene Nestor
