Mid-March will be remembered for its murders. A Brazilian miner was shot dead after he was robbed of raw gold by armed bandits at his mining camp at Black Water in the Cuyuni-Mazaruni. A boat captain drowned after pirates robbed him and his crew and forced them to plunge into the Atlantic. A housewife was hacked to death by an abusive husband at Glasgow on the East Bank Berbice and a vendor was robbed and shot dead at Hampshire on the Corentyne.
Everyday armed robberies continued. Armed bandits robbed a contractor of a $1.2M payroll at Enmore; robbed a woman at No. 2 Village, West Coast Berbice and robbed and battered a shop-owner at Triumph on the East Coast.
There has been little measurable success in stamping out the piracy and banditry which afflict the coastland and hinterland. The Guyana Police Force and Guyana Defence Force chose to deploy their combined resources and talents to pounce on the usual poor urban and rural communities and hold several persons “for questioning” last week.
Announcing their operation in a terse statement, the ‘Joint Services’ disclosed that forty seven apartments and fifteen buildings were searched in the usual areas − East Ruimveldt, Campbellville, New Amsterdam, Canje, Rainbow City, Kara-Kara Housing Scheme, Amelia’s Ward, Fairs Rust and Coomacka Mines − early on Wednesday. Thirty-two persons “held for questioning.”
By Friday, the operation had extended to Leopold and Water streets in Georgetown, Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Bartica, Wismar and the Upper Corentyne. One of the Defence Force’s helicopters was even employed to impart an air of seriousness to this series of senseless searches.
There seemed to have been no prior incident or intelligence to justify the crackdown. It was only afterwards that the police came up with the excuse that enquiries into alleged offences arising out of their searches would be conducted. Commissioner of Police Henry Greene, when asked about the purpose of the operation, explained in an almost absent-minded manner “There are some areas that we needed to do some searches and some probing in and we decided to do so today.” He admitted that no wanted persons or weapons were found.
Asked about allegations of misconduct by the policemen on the operation, the Commissioner amplified that “All over the world there is something known about collateral damage which results from the nature of the operation that you do. You don’t set out to do collateral damage. Sometimes you don’t get the cooperation and things don’t work as you expect. And, therefore, there is some collateral damage…”
Depressed communities have become used to collateral damage over the past decade. When she was Minister of Home Affairs, Gail Teixeira tried to justify the bizarre ‘Operation Stiletto’ in which over twelve dozen persons from the Buxton-Friendship neighbourhood were arrested without cause in an early morning raid back in October 2005. The victims were “held for questioning,” taken to Eve Leary to be documented, fingerprinted, photographed and released without charge.
Clement Rohee, when he became Minister of Home Affairs, offered no apology for the arrest of six dozen boys in July 2008 just days before the PPP congress at Diamond on the East Bank. During that operation, armed policemen pounced on the usual five East Bank Demerara villages – Agricola, Bagotstown, Eccles, Houston and McDoom. The boys were screened, photographed, fingerprinted and released without charge.
Wrong-headed campaigns against targeted communities are worse than useless. The Police are in danger of breaking the law and breaching the public’s trust. Pirates and bandits, meanwhile, continue to wreak havoc in the coastal waters, rural areas and the bush.
