There are young people enquiring about the number of people of African descent who were killed during the crime spree in the early 2000s. It has been reported that hundreds were killed.
It was not only African Guyanese who were killed during that time, and anyone is free to make enquiries about the details of one of the worst periods in Guyana’s history.
There is an article from August 2, 2018, titled “My government will spare no effort to expose the intellectual authors and the perpetrators.”
Then President Granger said that the government was determined to uncover the truth about the troubles.
“Speaking at the presentation of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the deaths of eight miners at Lindo Creek on or around the 21st June 2008, the Head of State said that the ‘Troubles’ will be remembered for a spate of uninvestigated massacres – at Kitty, Lamaha Gardens, Bourda, Buxton-Friendship, Prashad Nagar, Agricola-Eccles, La Bonne Intention, Bagotstown, Black Bush Polder, Lusignan, Lindo Creek and elsewhere.”
He was also quoted as saying “It was a time of arbitrary arrests; of disappearances and of torture of young men; of the surge in armed robberies, narco-trafficking and gun-running. During that first, deadly decade, there were 1,317 murders and 7,865 armed robberies.”
No matter how great or small are the number of ghosts that haunt us from that period, the horror and pain cannot be denied or diminished. We must tackle our painful past with honesty. There are lessons to be learned. There is not a specific number of people of a particular ethnic group that had to have died because of extrajudicial killings and Guyana being a narco-state for us to acknowledge how people suffered and how it changed the course of many lives.
Innocent people were killed, there were extrajudicial killings, criminals and police were also killed. Extrajudicial killings did not only occur during the 2002 to 2008 crime spree. There were such killings before and after. Within the last few years, we have seen the extrajudicial killings of Orin Boston in 2021 and Quindon Bacchus in 2022. The state was recently ordered to pay the family of Bacchus 24 million dollars. The Attorney General Anil Nandlall had announced his intention to appeal the judgment. There is no price enough for a life and the fact that the Attorney General even considered that is another indication that many people who sit in the positions of power in this country are cold-hearted. Nevertheless, it was announced sometime later that the judgment would not be appealed.
There should never be attempts to revise history in Guyana. The demons of the past cannot be deemed as angels of the present when they have not acknowledged their wrongdoings, have not been prosecuted or proved that they have changed. There are many unhealed wounds because people can choose to deny or dispute terrible things that have hurt communities, families and individuals. Those of us who lived through what happened during the period of 2002 to 2008 know what a harsh and haunting time it was, and the wounds are still fresh for some of us who were directly affected.
I can speak about my experiences as a Buxtonian. I lost three relatives to the violence of that time. The morning in April 2002 when Shaka Blair was killed, I was awakened from my sleep because a crowd was passing our house. It was then we learned that the police had killed Blair. That morning was the dawn of a dark time not only in Buxton, but across this country. I can speak about being terrified to go outside at nights. I can speak about seeing soldiers set up camp in Buxton, police patrolling and wondering what was going on and why such drastic changes were occurring in the village I grew up in and loved. I can speak about how I could not sleep well for a few weeks after the Lusignan massacre because I was constantly having nightmares of people shooting at my home.
I was not in Guyana for the entire period between 2002 and 2008. I was in the United Kingdom for a couple of years. I remember checking the news and almost every day seeing the faces of dead young men. After a while I was afraid to check the news. It was so disturbing what was happening that eventually I stopped checking daily. When I would speak to relatives, they would tell me about people who were killed. I knew some of the young men who joined the Fineman gang and all of them are deceased today. I know young men who disappeared, and their bodies were never found. There are backdams in this country that were allegedly converted to burial grounds for some of the missing.
Many remember the murder of Yohance Douglas. It was the police that killed that young man who was 19 at the time and a student at the University of Guyana. One of his relatives was a friend of my aunt who I lived with in the United Kingdom. I remember when my aunt received the call that he had been killed and how devastated his relative was. I also remember when my aunt broke the news that Buxtonian Brian Hamilton who owned the gas station in Buxton was killed. My blood ran cold. I was in shock. I thought that if someone like Hamilton could have been killed, then no one was safe. I constantly worried about my relatives.
When I returned to Guyana, the killings continued. It was not unusual to hear gunshots day and night. We had curfews. There were some nights when there was no sleep to be had because we listened all night to gunshots being exchanged between the gangs and the police. When we speak about our trauma and the dark time that it was, we are not inventing or exaggerating our experiences.
We also remember how George Bacchus was killed in 2004. He was said to be an informant exposing ties between the government and criminals. Ronald Waddell was also silenced during that time in 2006. He had a television programme on which he criticized the government and condemned extrajudicial killings. Who has been charged for their murders? Who has paid the price for those crimes? Waddell, Blair, Douglas and Bacchus are just a few of the names.
No matter the size of the list, such horrible occurrences were allowed to happen in Guyana for years and we should not denigrate each other for speaking about that period or having questions about the intellectual authors and perpetrators.
Every day we realise that we stand on shaky grounds in this country. In this silly season there will be vilification, defamation, denials about past hurts and the blame game as is the usual trend during an election year. This conversation is an opportunity to not mislead or gaslight but to have honest dialogue about how the lives of many Guyanese did not matter.
