For four hours on Monday night, Narine Khublall, former PPP/C parliamentarian Joseph Hamilton and about 30 other persons were surrounded by an angry mob in Khublall’s Sophia home fearful that an attempt would be made to burn it.
Angry residents stoned Khublall’s residence as well as his neighbour’s, set six vehicles alight, and burned a small shack with a horse stable attached, after allegations circulated that ballot boxes were in the PPP/C command centre located there.
Khublall said he strongly believes that what happened to him and the others was “not a political thing… it was a criminal thing.” “These people are giving the parties a bad name. They did not respond when the party members asked them to leave. They stayed because they wanted to rob and loot my home and my neighbour’s home,” he told Stabroek News.
Several members of the APNU+AFC coalition had visited the scene and implored the crowd to disperse, while assuring that the accusations lodged against the persons at the residence were false. But they failed to move the crowd.
Khublall and his residence are well known in ‘C’ Field, Sophia. His home houses a church, an internet café, a lessons place and an outreach centre, all of which offer free services to the community. It has also for several years served as a meeting place for PPP members and supporters in Sophia. As a known congregation point, it has served as a training centre and command centre for the PPP/C area management committee in the 2011 elections. And for the 2015 elections, it was identified to serve the same purpose, with a team led by Hamilton.
According to Hamilton, the ordeal began at about 5:30PM, when an individual known to him arrived in a bus and began to loudly proclaim that the command centre was an illegal polling station and that there were ballot boxes there. Though the individual was corrected, he continued to block the driveway and loudly make the comments.
By this time, Hamilton said, a crowd of APNU+AFC supporters, who had congregated outside polling places at the ‘C’ Field nursery school and the ‘D’ Field church, had begun to drift towards the commotion. “In fifteen minutes there was a crowd of about 200 persons and 45 minutes after that there were persons being transported from outside the community in buses and other vehicles,” he noted
Hamilton said political activist Freddie Kissoon arrived on the scene with several other persons at approximately the same time as other persons whom he described as “middle management” opposition members.
Hamilton said he suggested that these persons join him in a tour of the command centre so that they could see for themselves that the allegations were untrue. After the tour, Kissoon tried to address the crowd and asked those assembled to calm down and disperse as there were no ballot boxes on the premises.
This attempt failed as did another attempt 20 minutes later by APNU+AFC members Supriya Singh and Clayton Hall. Hamilton says that he stressed to these persons that what was happening was “unnecessary and uncalled for, benefitting no one and could reach a state which the leaders could not control.”
At this point, he said, coalition campaign co-chair Raphael Trotman arrived and along with the other coalition members already there toured the premises and then addressed the crowd.
Afraid
Despite their appeals, the size of the mob continued to swell. Unarmed policemen arrived and attempted to form a barricade between the crowd and the persons in the command centre and called for backup as they believed the crowd was waiting until dark to start behaving unruly.
The crowd then began demanding access to the home of Khublall’s neighbour to search her house but Hamilton told them he could not give them that permission as the home was not his. At this point, he said, he became afraid because he knew “that opportunistic men join in these things to create mayhem and havoc so that they could steal.”
Khublall’s bus was subsequently identified, stripped and set on fire with a Molotov cocktail. The police at the scene formed a bucket brigade and attempted to douse the fire when an explosion was heard. This forced the officers to take cover behind Hamilton’s vehicle and fire about six rounds in an attempt to disperse the crowd.
The persons there sought cover at the back of the yard while being pelted by “bottles, stones and everything you can think about,” Hamilton said. These missiles were being lobbed not from persons on the road but from persons who were on a dam where horses were being stabled.
The crowd stoned the home of Khublall’s neighbour, forcing her and nine other family members to break through the zinc fence separating her property from Khublall’s. They, however, did not come alone.
Hamilton said the neighbour came through the fence not just with her family but also with the three race horses which she owned. “We were just there congregating and trying to survive this ordeal; 30 persons, including about a half dozen females, and three horses,” he said.
Soon, another group of policemen arrived with shields and batons. These policemen attempted to drive back the mob but as they did so they exposed their backs and had to take cover after they were attacked by the mob.
During this encounter, several other vehicles were set on fire. A police motorcycle was one of them, another was the car Hamilton had bought for one of his sons. Watching the vehicle he had only bought last December and which he still has to pay for being destroyed made him angry. “I felt helpless and angry that the fruit of my hard work was being destroyed,” he said.
Four hours after the ordeal began and about three hours after they were first called, Tactical Services Unit (TSU) ranks arrived at the scene and were able to clear a path through the crowd.
Khublall said that he was “very happy and wished to commend the police for saving [them]. If not for the police the morning would’ve found us dead.”
Treated like criminals
He and the others were, however, concerned about the procedure used by the ranks, who in some cases made them feel as if they were the perpetrators and not the victims. Khublall’s neighbour, who asked not to be named, spoke of being handcuffed and transported to the Turkeyen Police Station in the same vehicle as the two men found looting her home, while Hamilton’s sons spoke of feeling vulnerable as they were taken through the rioting crowd with their hands tied and useless to them.
Despite these concerns, Hamilton himself told Stabroek News that he didn’t care “if they had brought coffins and told us to lie down in one so we could get out of there, I would’ve agreed.”
Despite leaving Sophia and arriving at the Turkeyen Police Station at about 1:30AM, the group was not allowed to go home until about 4AM. During this time, no enquiry was made as to their health or comfort and they were never offered any medical assistance for some of the individuals who injured.
This situation has been traumatic for all concerned and Khublall and his neighbour have both been unable to return to their homes. The neighbour told Stabroek News that she does not feel she will ever be able to return and is right now without a place to stay or house her horses. Khublall has lost his only means of earning (his minibus) and would like to be compensated for his loss. He added that his home is presently “under police guard yet persons are still trying to get in, even in the rain.”
Hamilton and his sons said they wish to see the original instigator, whom they have identified to the police, charged and placed before the courts for his part in creating the conflict.
