Unrest in Buxton once again manifested itself shortly after 11 o’clock on the first day of the new month. It had its origins in a CANU operation involving a Vigilance man who had a quantity of cannabis in his car. According to the Unit’s version of events it was conducting an operation on the East Coast to intercept a car when the vehicle drove into Buxton. It evaded the officers on several occasions including at a roadblock on the Buxton Public Road. The Unit then went on to relate how after the driver was arrested members of the public became hostile, assaulted several of its officers and damaged some of their vehicles in an attempt to release the suspect by pulling him from the one in which he was being held. This it was said resulted in several shots being discharged in the air.
The chronology of events given by the police in a statement went further than what CANU had to say. With reference to the car being pursued – a white Toyota Premio – the police said that it ended up in Company Road Trench at Buxton and after a search a quantity of cannabis was found. “As a result, several villagers came out and tried to take the suspect away from the CANU officers. Several shots were fired by CANU Officers in a bid to deter the crowd and they managed to escort the suspect to CANU Headquarters. The crowd became annoyed and started to place debris on the main thoroughfares, East Coast Highway and Railway Embankment and lit same, causing vehicular traffic to come to a standstill”, the police said.
In other words, the riotous behaviour did not start until after CANU had fired shots in the air, not when the driver of the suspect car was arrested. At that point it was still a protest, albeit a very undisciplined one, and did not involve the numbers of people who later came out onto the road and engaged in violent acts. At its height there were about 400 people involved, burning tyres, garbage and pieces of wood. Schools had to be closed along with shops, gas stations and restaurants, while traffic came to a standstill between Company Road Buxton and Friendship. The Joint Services had to be brought out, and they cleared the debris following which the road became passable at 5 pm.
A particularly distasteful aspect of the story was the attack on a lorry driver who managed to escape, but whose vehicle was destroyed after being set on fire. Two fire tenders had to be called out to extinguish the blaze. In addition, the GPF said that a resident of Bath Settlement reported to the police at Fort Wellington that he had been cuffed several times and relieved of $300,000 on the Buxton Public Road.
It is clear that some Buxtonians, at least, have an approach to marijuana which does not correspond with what the statutes require, recent changes to the law notwithstanding. Further-more, one has to infer that they knew the suspect concerned. However, the law of the land is the law of the land, and the CANU officers were rightly discharging their duty by implementing it. And in this case we are not talking about a modest amount of cannabis; 23.2 kgs were found.
What the CANU officers, probably less experienced than the police in this particular location, do not appear to have recognised was the danger of firing shots there, more particularly if this was done wildly. As it was they seem to have hit some houses in the process thereby incensing the villagers. In extreme situations firearms may well have to be used, but this was not such a situation, and had the officers refrained from this course of action the incident might have been confined to a scuffle of a more or less rough nature, but not a large-scale riot.
For their part the police were a model of restraint and discretion, despite the fact they were being pelted with glass bottles at one point, and along with commuters were the target of profanities and insults of one kind or another. They did not attempt to move in on the rioters, and that was because Commander of Region 4 ‘C’ Division Khali Pareshram displayed some commendable common sense. He said the Guyana Police Force did not want to use force to remove residents from the road, but were engaging community leaders to secure their intervention. The approach worked, and it was a village leader who persuaded the rioters to go home at 5 o’clock. A confrontation with the police and Joint Services would have undoubtedly produced a far worse outcome.
Buxton is a village with its own ethos, and that ethos is one of resistance. It is not something, as some believe, which dates back only to 2002; it goes back much further, even into the nineteenth century. In colonial times the community confronted governors, just as it confronts governments today, while its relationship with the police in recent times has been less than pain free. What fuels current attitudes is a belief that the government is not operating according to principles of equality and fair treatment and that there is discrimination against African Guyanese. In addition to this there have been police killings where young African Guyanese are most often the victims. Those were some of the complaints displayed on placards when the Prime Minister visited Buxton in the wake of the Quindon Bacchus killing at Haslington, allegedly by an undercover policeman in July last year.
In dealing with Buxton the impression is conveyed that the government at the highest level really doesn’t know what happens on the ground. The Prime Minister and his bevy of Ministers seemed nonplussed when Regional Councillor Evelyn Estwick said that her proposal to rehabilitate several streets in the village was rejected and not included in the 2022 Regional Budget. The rejection came at the level of the Regional Executive Officer, appointed by the government, and she wondered whether the same thing would happen in 2023. Residents had complained bitterly about the deplorable roads, the need for a farm to market road, and drainage issues.
The killing of Quindon Bacchus also still resonates with Buxtonians in addition to other villagers along the East Coast, and may arguably have had a role to play when they heard the gunshots fired by CANU. However, while it is important for government to address the concerns of African communities if there is to be any hope of integrating them into the wider social fabric, and if at the moment prudence dictates that violent confrontation between the authorities and the villagers is to be avoided, there is something which the Buxtonians themselves should acknowledge. And that is Buxton harbours a criminal element. It may not be very large, and the exact numbers possibly only the villagers themselves know. As on other occasions, they were there to attack the truck driver and burn his vehicle, and assault and rob a private citizen two days ago. No number of deplorable roads can possibly ever justify such behaviour, and the larger community should recognise that it will be contaminated by such crimes, and its genuine concerns taken much less seriously as a consequence.
Mending fences with African villages of which Buxton is the leading example will take time, effort and goodwill on the part of government; it will also require an eye on what its own REOs do in the regions, and ensure they are even-handed. By now the Minister of Home Affairs should be fully aware of the problems with the police and firearms, and, it might be added, CANU officers too. They lack the training necessary, and equally important, unlike Commander Pareshram, they lack judgement. Oil money won’t solve those problems.
