Dear Editor,
In response to your editorial, ‘Torture, plain and simple,’ (July 27), which focused primarily on latest torture victim, Mr Troy Small, I am of the opinion that we have reached a frightening stage in Guyana where editorials, commentaries and letters may no longer be deemed workable to prevent the Jagdeo administration from operating like a brakeless, runaway locomotive on a steep decline.
Still, I feel compelled to sit at my keyboard produce this letter, because as I read the editorial I couldn’t help picking my brain trying to figure out what on earth could be inspiring this beastly behaviour by the authorities, if after all the torturing they are still not gaining any credible information from their torture victims!
Something seriously and radically has to give in Guyana or else we could be looking at what may well be a pattern of orchestrated provocations by the authorities designed to give them reason to ‘go rogue’ on people’s freedoms and rights in the name of crime-solving but without solving any crime.
Crime in Guyana has literally jostled economic security for the top spot on the people’s list of concerns, and if only the Jagdeo administration were a responsible, law-abiding government that enabled the effective operation of a criminal justice system – from arrests to trial to fines/incarceration – there would be no need to break the law, let alone international treaties and conventions, in an attempt to combat major crimes.
A government whose agencies resort to brutally torturing criminals or criminal suspects has no respect for the law – including international laws, treaties and conventions on torture – it is sworn to uphold and no respect for the people it is sworn to protect. Even criminals have a right to protection from violence under law-abiding governments.
I know there are those who either turn a blind eye to the tortures or even openly approve the tortures, because they believe that if the government approves the Joint Services going after criminal suspects, then there must be enough suspicion to warrant the use of torture methods to get information. Now, please correct me if I am wrong, but here is my nagging concern based on what I have gleaned so far: all the torture victims at the hands of men operating as state agents in Guyana, to date, are black male Guyanese.
Yes, it is true that mostly black male Guyanese have been fingered as criminals or suspects in crimes against Indian Guyanese, but that cannot be an excuse or reason to target any black male Guyanese every time a major crime is committed – whether against Indian Guyanese or the government. Randomly picking up black males as suspects, torturing them and either releasing them or bringing flimsy and unfounded charges against them cannot be allowed to continue, whether Guyana is under a democratic or dictatorial regime. And just as it was unacceptable for black criminal elements to have engaged in violent or deadly attacks against Indian Guyanese in the name of whatever demented cause, it is just as unacceptable for the government to appear to be facilitative of violent torture against black Guyanese.
Innocent Indian Guyanese did nothing to their black attackers to warrant those deadly attacks, even though the attacks themselves did not yield anything tangible for the attackers.
There was not even one concession from the government. So, was there a lesson to be learned from those unprofitable attacks against a particular race of people who were not guilty of any wrongdoing?
One would have hoped we all learned something, but alas, it is now obvious that the Jagdeo administration learned nothing and, therefore, needs to be given a lesson of its own. Someone or some group in Guyana has to take this administration’s documented response to torture and have it presented cogently and compellingly to Caricom, the Commonwealth, the United Nations and to the sponsors/hosts of the September climate change meeting in Switzerland, and the December meeting in Denmark, both of which President Bharrat Jagdeo is scheduled to attend.
Maybe the Alliance For Change needs to consider putting together another full page ad for publication in Swiss and Danish major dailies to explain this inhumanity by the Jagdeo administration, which prides itself as a leader in the fight against climate change, but has not prevented the torture against its own citizens!
This government gives the impression it goes after armed gunmen with venom and vigour, not to prove that the criminal justice system works, but to make a political statement that criminals and suspects are better off dead than to be dealt with in accordance with criminal justice. On the other hand, it has held its security apparatus in check where major drug smuggling, major money laundering and major acts of corruption in government are concerned. But it hasn’t stopped there; it has now gone farther in its perversion of justice and human rights to tolerate torture.
And even after all Mr Small went through, being beaten on the foot with a hammer, the Police Commissioner has the nerve to say the torture victim is still a suspect. The names mentioned in your well-presented editorial as torture victims in Guyana – Small, Michael Dunn, Alvin Wilson, Sharth Robinson, David Leander, Patrick Sumner, Victor Jones, Edward Niles and the two Lindeners – from my own reading of the news, not one of them was ever caught in the act committing a crime for which they were tortured. They were accused and suspected, but never caught and processed through the criminal justice system as guilty.
And even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that they were/are criminals, what was/is supposed to be government’s role in dealing with them? Is it not to prove their guilt in a court of law based on incontrovertible evidence? So what evidence has government gleaned so far through torture?
The two men in Linden mentioned above as being beaten were asleep in their home when Joint Services personnel broke into their home and beat the living daylights out of them, after which the JS claimed the men had weapons and ammunition in the home.
From my recollection, there was no link of the weapons to any crime committed, so the only crime here was illegal possession. Does illegal weapons possession require a terrible beating by state agents? If so, why aren’t many homes on the East Coast and West Coast Demerara, West Coast Berbice and Corentyne that have illegal weapons right now not being raided by the Joint Services and their occupants being brutally beaten?
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
