Dear Editor,
Guyana will never forget the outrage of the Lusignan massacre, awesome in its evil, shock and irrationality. The second shock was Bartica which gave plurality to the assault on our fading sense of innocence. The third shock was Lindo Creek, which event told us that our society has become so deformed we can produce the individuals who commit such heinous compound crimes.
The reflexive instinct is to legislate for anything that might help strengthen our criminal justice system tilting the balance in society’s favour: tighter gun and ammunition control; more ranks on the road; more intervention by the police; more foreign help; better and more accurate intelligence; greater police supervision of former offenders and deviants; zero tolerance for hooliganism and for all offenders to make them recognize the consequence of breaking basic human rules on any scale.
All may help at the margins, yet even the most ardent advocates of the hard line know that the introduction of routine systematic torture of suspects or prisoners is a total abandonment of civilized conduct and the rule of law. The latter once dissipated cannot easily be reinstated or re-adhered. But society is yet to speak out in one voice against this latest assault on our collective consciousness. Where has our instinct for justice gone? Is there no longer a craving to have contained unlawful practices by those we expect, more than any others to uphold the law?
In addressing the German people in Berlin last week Barack Obama posed an important question which could easily have been directed to the Guyanese people: “Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law?”
I borrow now from the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s famous song when I say, ‘The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.’
Yours faithfully,
F. Hamley Case