-Luncheon
Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon admitted that there were some “legitimate names” included on the parliamentary opposition’s dossier of human rights abuses but said that these could be categorised as “work in progress” since the police would still be investigating the cases and would not have officially closed their investigations. Nevertheless he accused the parties of sensationalism.
And in dismissing the lists compiled by the opposition parties Dr Luncheon, who was speaking at a recent press conference, said that if he had a cat which had died then the animal would also have made the list of names compiled by the parties.
According to Luncheon there continued to be heightened interest in a number of unexplained deaths and the convention being applied was: “They are being investigated, an inquest has been ordered and a series could be indeed compiled, but I think that what the series would show is primarily work in progress. I don’t believe the police and investigators would categorically say close unless they would have provided the explanation solving the death of the individual and so work in progress can best categorise I think the vast majority of the legitimate inclusions on that list.”
He told reporters that if the document was seen in the context in which it had been compiled then there was no basis for including many of the names there.
“You know if they had said, well we just going and collect anybody that died… but it was all couched in extra-judicial killing, then we added in torture and then we added in international enquiry and the focus became more and more amorphous. So what happened at the end you had really a dog season, you could have put anything in the report; I could have put my cat name and there would have been some legitimacy in including the cat on the list…” Dr Luncheon said
The government’s chief spokesperson said when one went through the list of names in the document there was no common trend as “the only thing there that is common to everybody else is probably an event of putting them on the list, because you had living people, you had dead people, you had obviously people who died for explanation and causes that were quite clear, others for without causes – anything was on the list.”
He said in his estimation the inclusion of the names of almost anyone was not an oversight but rather, “it was as far as I am concerned… premeditated; it was intended. I think to get four hundred and forty… nine names there had to be a little amorphous and the important thing was to get the attention-grabbing headlines that four hundred and forty-nine people [died].”
“At least it better than the two hundred or the four hundred that had been earlier claimed. And I saw that and many people agreed, that there was obviously an element of sensationalism,” he said.
Days after the dossier was made public, the Office of the President (OP) described it an attempt at politicking, and stated that the compilation of abuses, including the torture and murder of citizens allegedly carried out with state support contained inexplicable and reckless entries as well as major omissions.
“It is obvious that the PNCR and their acolytes in their parliamentary opposition parties have used the publication of the dossier to advance their grand design which is to sensationalism, to confuse and to score partisan political points using the circumstances of the dead as their primary tool,” OP said in its statement.
The PNCR, AFC, GAP, WPA and the NFA had launched the dossier chronicling a decade and a half of abuses, including unlawful killings.
The goal of the dossier, according to the parties, was to establish that there was a sufficient ‘prima facie’ basis to warrant further interrogation of grave human rights abuses by an independent body with the requisite legal authority. The parties have warned that the failure to launch such a probe could fuel a cycle of hatred that could stoke the return of violence.
The dossier includes a partial list of citizens unlawfully killed between 1993 and 2002; a partial list of citizens allegedly shot to death or otherwise unlawfully killed by the ‘Black Clothes’ squad or other rogue elements of the security services, and the ‘Phantom Squad,’ in addition to other instances of extra-judicial killing, execution and assassination; and a full list of extra-judicial and other killings between 1993 and 2009, numbering 449. Addressing the alleged link between the government and convicted drug kingpin Roger Khan, the dossier concludes that hundreds of killings committed in the wake of the 2002 jailbreak were the result of a gang “war” between the 2002 Mash Day prison escapees and Khan’s ‘Phantom Squad,’ with both sides aided by rogue elements of the disciplined forces that were being supported by the government.
However, the government dismissed the effort as part of a continuing campaign by the PNCR against law and order. It had said public records would show that the PNCR had consistently been opposed to the government’s defence of public order and democratic gains and it accused the party of offering support to criminal gangs. “The PNCR under successive party leaders and their like-minded co-conspirators have openly supported the aims and objectives of those gangs, joining in the glorification of gang members and leaders in life and in death,” the statement said, adding that with the publication of the dossier the party had succeeded in co-opting other parliamentary political parties into its grand design.