The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) yesterday said that it has approached the United Nations Resident Coordinator here with a view to having international forensic experts investigate the recent murders of young men in West Coast Berbice.
In a statement, the GHRA said that the UN is currently reviewing the request and the logistical implications of it.
On Sunday, the mutilated bodies of cousins Isaiah Henry, 16, and Joel Henry, 19, were found in the Cotton Tree backdam. On Wednesday in what appeared to be a reprisal killing, the body of Haresh Singh, 17, was found in the Number Two Village backdam. Three of Singh’s relatives were arrested in relation to the murder of the Henry cousins.
The GHRA said that the primary purpose of the initiative is to provide the families and the society with a trustworthy version of the events surrounding the murders.
“Without an impartial version of the truth, acceptable to all right-minded Guyanese, these events will inevitably join the catalogue of unresolved atrocities embedded in Guyanese ethnic folklore. Such events are never allowed to be conclusively buried. They survive in a mythical realm leaving the listener unsure whether the event had occurred in the 1960s, 1997, 2003 and so on”, the GHRA said.
It contended that while instinctive horror at the murders is widespread across ethnic divides, no one, can claim to be really shocked.
“All thinking Guyanese have spent the last five months fearful that reckless political rhetoric, inflamed by the pernicious use of social media, would ignite this tit-for-tat vigilante justice –our modern-day version of `lynching’”, the GHRA said.
It added that an initiative of this nature would also serve as a confidence-building measure to re-assure that crises of this type could be peacefully resolved.
Another aim of the initiative, the GHRA said is the valuable assistance it would provide to the Guyana Police Force to have the back-up of independent international expertise to ascertain the circumstances of the murders and to facilitate justice.
President Irfaan Ali on Wednesday night said that his government would be approaching the Caribbean Regional Security System and the United Kingdom government for assistance to the police in these matters.
The GHRA said that its initiative would also inject an impartial international element into the situation deterring any momentum towards a greater national crisis.
It noted however that a number of conditionalities have to be met for a visit of this nature to occur. Some of these are specific to United Nations involvement (since Guyana is a member State of the United Nations), other requirements would apply to experts from any source.
GHRA said that these include:
Authorization by the Government
Access to medical records
Authorization to conduct an independent autopsy which requires:
o access to a medical lab and all that goes with it
o permission from the family
Security assessment for possible need to protect the expert
Coordination with the Police and Judiciary
Collaboration from local legal and medical actors
Access to any independent local investigation.
