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The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has joined calls for a forensic investigation into the gruesome murder of the Henry teens at Cotton Tree, Berbice over the weekend.
In a statement on Tuesday, the GHRA said it is preparing a formal request to the UN Resident Representative for a visit to Guyana of the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions accompanied by a forensic pathologist.
The Association said this call is not intended to cast doubt on the capacity or impartiality of local investigators, so much as a response to the deep distrust accompanying the political polarization of the society.
“Both of the main political parties are still operating in elections mode regardless of the cost to the national interest: the APNU coalition refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the elections and the ruling PPP fixated on making them pay for the past five months”, the Human Rights Association said.
The Association further issued an appeal to “those Governments and international organizations which sustained an extraordinary interest in the electoral saga that precipitated this tragic event, to sustain their concern by supporting the call for international forensic expertise to accomplish this goal”.
A similar call for forensic help was made by Prominent Attorney-at-law, Nigel Hughes who said local police can only do the best with the equipment they have.
“The last thing needed here is a weak confession which will get tossed at trial. And even if not tossed, a conviction based solely on a confession followed by a request for hanging”, the Attorney said.
Meanwhile, the Human Rights body said these callous murders are not seen as isolated. “Both sides are quick to see them as a continuation of earlier ethnic upheavals –the ‘fine man’ gang murderous massacres on the Indo-Guyanese side and the large number of young Afro-Guyanese males killed in the decade of 2000. Both sides feel accumulated bitterness towards a system that has accommodated such turmoil”.
The GHRA, in its statement said the harsh dimension of the problem is that the more insecure each group becomes, the less capable they appear to be of appreciating the extent to which they share the same fears and insecurity adding that this incapacity does not reflect an unwillingness to recognize identity of pain and suffering, so much as how to do so as ethnic groups.
The GHRA noted that “at present there is a vacuum of community leadership, for which responsibility must be shared by both civic and political organizations – the mediators of our interactions beyond the individual level. We can all call for swift apprehension and punishment of the killers. While such calls are inevitable and correct, politically we have nothing else to offer the families and groups most affected by these deaths. We can only put hope in a judicial solution”.
The Human Rights Association further called on religious, social and political leaders to “explore how to build a reconciling dynamic into all of our activities. Without this ingredient, it is difficult to see how we can move the society to more respectful and dignified ways of relating to each other. Business as usual, albeit in a softer tone, is no longer sufficient”.
The GHRA is however confident that the two major parties have the capacity to bring this crisis to an end while promising to do all in its power to ensure an impartial, transparent investigation into the recent atrocities.
