Chairman of the Regional Democratic Council of Region 10 Sharma Solomon says that he is happy that the PPP and the government have accepted the final report of the Linden Commission of Inquiry (COI), since it means they acknowledge that the police were to blame for the killing of three unarmed people during the July 18, 2012 protest.
But Solomon has also challenged the COI’s finding that the region was responsible for the events as they unfolded on the day when three men, Ron Somerset, Shemroy Bouyea and Allan Lewis were killed and almost two dozen others injured.
“The region will be putting out an official position on its role [in the protests],” he said, stating that the region has not yet done a thorough assessment of the contents of the COI’s report. He said that from a preliminary assessment, the region determined that there are some areas which vindicated its position and other areas with which it is dissatisfied.
“At the end of the day, the report determined that lethal force was used by an arm of the state against unarmed people. If the government accepts the report then [it stands to reason that] it accepts that the police murdered and injured people – that vindicates us,” Solomon said. “There was nothing to justify the use of lethal force…,” he said, while noting that the region yesterday met the families of the injured.
On Saturday, PPP spokesperson Gail Teixeira described the report as fair.
Further, Solomon said that the region will be meeting various stakeholders before making an official statement on the compensation offered to the relatives of persons killed and wounded in the confrontation, including persons shot and wounded in Linden on the days following July 18, 2012.
“Our concern is compensation and we will be employing legal guidance [on this] since the Commission values life on what is earned and this is
very disturbing,” he told Stabroek News.
Solomon also took issue with the report casting the blame for the events of July 18 at the feet of the regional administration. The report said:
“What transpired on the bridge on July 18, 2012 could have been avoided if some of the influential community persons had intervened and advised the protestors to display due respect for the law. Also on the scene was Miss Vanessa Kissoon, Member of Parliament representing the Political Party – A Partnership for National Unity. Miss Kissoon spent quite a long time at the scene but did absolutely nothing to dissuade the protestors from breaking the law by the blocking of the bridge.”
However, Solomon disagreed with the report. “The regional [officials] who organised the protest did nothing out of the ordinary,” he said, in response to those who said that the region should have controlled the crowd better. He added that prior to the July 18 killings, the region had organised some 15 other protests, beginning since April last year.
Solomon made the point that had the commissioners taken all of the previous protest actions into consideration, they would have realised that the people of Region 10 wanted a hearing with the government and this only happened after the events of July 18, 2012.
Solomon is of the view that the outcome of that tragic day is solely the fault of the government because it had not deemed it fit to meet Lindeners prior to the killings and also because an arm of the state used deadly force to subdue the protesters.
“At the end of the day the report established that the police used lethal force against unarmed citizens and I am glad that the PPP/C has accepted this report,” said Solomon.
