Dear Editor,
Dead men tell no tales. Firstly, sympathies to the family of the late Dr. Roger Luncheon. His contributions to Guyana were immense.
On August 18, at a Night of Reflection on Dr. Luncheon’s life, former President Jagdeo stated that he and Dr. Luncheon were among a select few at the epicenter of Guyana’s tumultuous crime wave in the early 2000s. He suggested that our nation’s interests were betrayed by individuals in the highest tiers of leadership in the security services. Most importantly, he noted that the realities of that period had to be kept secret and will “go to the grave” with Dr. Luncheon. He promised to delve further into this during Dr. Luncheon’s funeral, and intimated that he, too, intends to keep such secrets classified. On August 22, at the funeral and despite the promise, former President Jagdeo steered clear of details, though he did reiterate that secrets are now confined “to the grave”.
Editor, our family has been unrelenting in its 17 year plea for a further and better investigation into the death of our loved ones on April 22, 2006 (including a member of the very government in the eye of the storm). To declare that there is information from that period that has now gone with Dr. Luncheon and will go with other central figures of that time “to the grave” is disturbing. It is indefensible. It smacks of rank insensitivity to those who remain in the dark all these years later. It is an affront to the memories of those who lost their lives. Most of all, it disregards a fundamental expectation of law, order and justice – that a government owes its citizenry all necessary information, be it good, bad or ugly, to identify wrongdoing and to allow justice to run its course. Simply put, the intellectual authorship behind that anarchic period cannot be treated as the privileged bailiwick of a cloistered group.
We are not naive. There is no doubt that the details of that time must be troubling. But to declare, nearly two decades since, that knowledge and information will not come to light and call to account those who walk among us with blood on their hands is outrageous. It bears macabre reminding that, in our harrowing episode alone, Satyadeow Sawh, Rajpat Sawh, Phulmattie Persaud and Curtis Robinson all gruesomely lost their lives. Others were devastatingly injured – Aga Khan lost a kidney and faced further medical complications. Omprakash Sawh was shot. Our family dog, Brutus, was riddled with over 30 bullets. Our community was a murder scene. The nation was psychologically traumatized. To this day, people still lament the horror.
We reiterate – remarking that information about that murderous time will “go to the grave” is scandalous. The gravity of death opens the eyes of those left to mourn. There is nothing heroic about taking vital information “to the grave”. Whatever is known must be brought to light without delay so that the memories of those whose lives were extinguished and the lived realities of those left behind are no longer insulted.
Roger Sawh
On behalf of the family of the
late Satyadeow Sawh
