The ‘Troubles’ were a human catastrophe that resulted from the PPPC (People’s Progressive Party Civic) administration’s deliberate policy decisions. The constitutional fandango of 11th August 1999 imposed the second unelected President in two years in an already unstable political situation. Worse, it set the stage for an unprecedented surge of ‘state violence’ that degenerated into the ‘Troubles’ – the name given to the decade of death between 2000 and 2010.
Former President David Granger, speaking on his weekly programme – The Public Interest – defined state violence, conventionally, as the exercise of governmental authority to cause unnecessary harm and suffering to citizens. He recounted that the televised execution by the police of a wanted man on 9th February 2000 and several other deaths confirmed public perceptions that extra-judicial killings by the Guyana Police Force – agents of the state – had already undermined the criminal justice system.
The former president recalled that the US Department of State’s annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices iterated that “The most significant reported abuses included potentially unlawful killings by police…public investigations rarely are conducted into such killings [and]…police abuses are committed with impunity.”
Granger added that the UN Human Rights Committee made 22 recommendations to the PPPC administration, including a call for prompt investigation by an impartial body of extrajudicial killings and excessive use of force, in March 2000. Further, the GHRA’s (Guyana Human Rights Association) report – Ambivalent about Violence: A Report on Fatal Shootings by the Police, 1980-2001 – found that the police killed 239 persons in 21 years up to the outbreak of the ‘Troubles’.
Granger explained that the PPPC administration ignored the UK DfID’s (Department for International Development) Guyana Police Reform Programme Strategic Report, 2000. Instead, it allowed the Police Force to establish the notorious Target Special Squad which was accused of “…detention without explanation, killing without investigation and injury without compensation.”
The former president recalled that violence arising from ‘drug-gang warfare’ was caused by narco-traffickers who aimed at extending their drug enterprises and eliminating competition and resistance. Narco-trafficking was allowed to flourish and was calculated to be contributing 20 per cent of GDP at the start of the century.
The PPPC administration discarded ‘Guyana’s strategy for dealing with the drug problem’ and dissolved the NADLEC (National Drug Law Enforcement Committee) which the PNC administration established since 1988 and, instead, established an ineffective CANU (Customs Anti-Narcotics Agency) and evaded the opening of a DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) office in Georgetown.
Guyana, as a consequence, had to endure the importation of illegal narcotics and weapons evidenced by the discovery of over 3,000 kg (6,940 pounds) of cocaine on MV Danielsen in October 1998; the construction of illegal, purpose-built airstrips to facilitate flights of foreign aircraft; the State’s strange failure to arrest and punish known traffickers and increased violence.
The former president concluded that the PPPC administration permitted political interference in the professional management of the Police Force; obstructed the implementation of reasonable, remedial measures; contributed to the debilitation of law-enforcement agencies and was responsible for the intensification of violence in the ‘Troubles.’
