call on human services ministry, GHRA to investigate
“All two dem toilets full to the brim and overflowing, nobody can’t use that. And then you have some big blue flies does be flying whole day and going zoom all the time; it is horrible and I keep thinking about it all the time,” a man taken into custody at the Brickdam Police Station said of his experience.
The push-cart operator who spoke to Stabroek News on the condition of anonymity, said he had had an altercation with another operator and was arrested just before a national holiday. He said after spending four days in the lock-ups he was charged and fined $5,000 after the magistrate ruled that the $250,000 compensation demanded by the virtual complainant was ridiculous.
“Three days after I come out I was still smelling dat place… is like I was breathing the stink smell all the time, I throw away all me clothes I had but I was still smelling. Dat place is not fit for human beings and it should be closed down, I thinking about all the people who in there and all a dem who will go, that place has to close down,” the distraught man said.
Bathing and sleeping
In recalling more of his experiences there the cart operator said detainees were only allowed one small drink bottle of water to have a “bath” inside the lock-ups. He said at the time of his detention two Nigerian nationals, who were also detained after having been found as stowaways on a vessel were regarded as “trustees” and they were the ones who were allowed to fill the water for the others. However, “If you didn’t had no bottle then you can’t bathe.”
He said while there are twenty cells in the facility no detainee stays in them because they are all filled with faeces and urine since the toilets are not usable. “Everyone just stay outside of dem cells and when you want sleep you just lie down right deh on the concrete. No one ent want go in dem cells because dem more stink and nasty and even though dem have a boy cleaning every day he does just clean the front of dem cells…”
Meals
The man said though relatives are allowed to provide three meals per day for detainees, they aren’t allowed visitors. Therefore, he said, detainees can never be sure if the meals they receive are the ones supplied by their relatives. “And then they would stir up in the food like if it is pig food to make sure nothing else in deh in.” Detainees whose meals were provided by the state were given a daily staple of peas and rice which was referred to as “cook-up, but it ent had no meat.”
The cart operator said what he found most disturbing was that the morning tea was served to detainees in the same bucket that is used to clean the cells. “And dem would have a enamel cup inside and you had to dip out deh tea and put it in a bottle; if you had one and if you ent had one den you ent get no tea,” he said. “I does still think about it, I tell you it was not nice and if you heart ent good or you have breathing problem you guh dead in there.”
Human rights
The man feels that the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security should look into the issue since he believes that the treatment meted out to detainees is in violation of their human rights. He said too he had approached the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) for assistance and he hopes that by publicising his story and with the support of other detainees, the facility will be closed.
In January 2002, Chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, Lord Daniel Brennan QC had recommended that the facility be shut down after a visit to Guyana aimed at improving the local judicial system. During his visit Lord Brennan met with members of the judiciary, the police force and the prison service. He had also toured the Camp Street Prison calling it a “reasonable” facility but had said that the Brickdam lockups should be “locked up and closed.”
In 1999 then Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj had closed the facility for renovations. At the time GHRA representative Merle Mendonca welcomed the decision noting that it was a symbol of the stark levels of degradation to which the society had fallen. In a press release the GHRA had said that men died violently in those lock-ups and many of them were physically and emotionally scarred for life, particularly those who were totally unprepared and not equipped for the foul and repulsive conditions that obtained there. Later, in 2002 the GHRA also welcomed Lord Brennan’s recommendation to close the facility.
Dying
Today the Brickdam lock-ups remain open and men are still dying violently there. About two weeks ago contractor James Nelson was found dead in the facility. Police said the man had frequently banged his head against the walls of the facility and he died from his injuries. Nelson’s death prompted Alliance For Change leader Raphael Trotman to say in a letter to this newspaper, that “there is something horribly and murderously wrong happening within the walls of our security forces where prisoners are kept.” Trotman noted that for the year Ramesh Sawh died at the Enmore lock-ups, Surendranauth Boojnauth at the Mahaica lock-ups and Edwin Niles and Nolan Noble lost their lives at the Georgetown prison.
Back in 2002 Mendonca had told Stabroek News that the GHRA had been monitoring the locks-up since the early ’80s and its first recorded death there was that of Ramkissoon Saymar in February 1982. At that time Mendonca had pointed out that 18 years later the death of fisherman Mohammed Shafeek who died in the same facility in September 2000, was remarkable “in that its bestiality paralleled that of Saymar’s demise.” She had also said that both deaths had provoked a public outcry.
On November 27, 2001 a three-member coroner’s jury had determined after a seven-minute deliberation, that the police were responsible for Shafeek’s death. This ruling was later overturned in the High Court. Magistrate Cecil Sullivan who presided over the inquest had told this newspaper that the jury had found that Shafeek had been beaten by a lance corporal and his associates.
According to Mendonca it took 20 years of complaints from the GHRA and other institutions about the conditions at Brickdam before Gajraj had acknowledged that a problem existed. She said that Gajraj had closed the facility after a public uproar over children being held at the lock-ups. Mendonca had pointed out that the children were then moved to the Kitty Police Station and because the same conditions obtained there they were then moved to the Ruimveldt Police Station. After this, all GHRA requests to visit the state’s lock-ups were denied.
“Our knowledge of the police lock-ups comes from numerous statements from persons who pass through the facilities and who testify to the high level of violence some detainees exercise over each other,” Mendonca had said at the time. She had also said that persons had testified about sexual assaults, overcrowding and the lack of adequate air and lighting. And while many of the city’s lock-ups are said to be in deplorable condition the Brickdam lock-ups are said to be the “worst of the worst.”
“I know they have to lock people up but you must treat dem like human beings, you can’t treat people like dat,” the cart operator said, adding “I does remember my experience all dah time, every time I talk about it you could see the expression on me face, I remembering.”
When Stabroek News attempted to speak to Commander of ‘A’ Division Leroy Brummel on the state of the facility he declined, stating that the police and the public would have different “ideas on what a lock-up should be like.” Several attempts to speak to Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee on the issue also proved futile. Rohee said he was not “prepared to speak on the state of police lock-ups.”