Dear Editor,
When I saw Tacuma Ogunseye shackled in irons I was horrified. I know that images have erupted in some African Guyanese minds of slaves in slave ships, of African slaves in slave plantations. I cannot lay claim to possession of an African consciousness and would not say that that imagery is far fetched. But I was reminded of shackled prisoners of chain gangs and people conquered and paraded to provide spectacle. In Guyana in the old days prisoners on charges of murder and of other very serious offenses would be handcuffed or shackled in very exceptional circumstances.
As a lawyer associated with other Attorneys-at-Law, Nigel Hughes and Darren Wade appearing in defence in the charge against him for racial incitement, the unwarranted and devious police procedures employed against him and reports of his feet locked in chains, prompted me to act in solidarity. I am not permitted to speak in public about the demerits of the case against him.
But why a wanted bulletin was posted when I am certain police surveillance of him could not have failed to account for his location and when he was appearing in public and when the police did not visit his home, where I think he worked and slept and to find him there. How unimaginative was this fugitive from justice in not concealing himself in some underground tunnel.
Why was he not charged and brought before the Court as soon as he was presented by Attorney-at-law, Mr. Nigel Hughes to a police station. Why was he kept in a guarded cell for seventy two hours and if charges were not ready why not send him home on station bail!
And why chain him when he volunteered his presence to the police for was not that a public statement that he had no intention of breaking out of the lock up. Why not even the usual handcuff, though even that form of restraint was unnecessary!
There was something more sinister and that was to humiliate him, to bring him into public odium and to degrade his cause, by mischievously condemning it as a criminal enterprise. It was not legalistic, it was political with an element of state terror.
My other reaction to his being put in chains was that this was a crime against my humanity. It was cruel, inhuman and unusual punishment of a prisoner and this should be explored as a violation of human dignity and as a chargeable offence or grounds for a constitutional action.
I do not know if the Guyana Bar Association has issued a public protest, if it did not then it should.
Since the Government is finally accountable for all actions of the Police I call upon the Government to tender to the people of Guyana a public apology for the treatment of Tacuma Ogunseye a peaceful and honourable citizen of Guyana. If the Government was not complicit it should start an inquiry into police misconduct in this matter.
I am a proud Indian of Guyana, twice a political prisoner, but never in chains or even handcuffed, and in this I am an African Ogunseye as well and I felt the iron chains burning into the flesh of my feet.
Yours faithfully,
Moses Bhagwan
