The killing of poor, young males by the Guyana Police Force and its notorious and specious Target Special Squad throughout the People’s Progressive Party Civic’s regime confirmed public impressions that the lives of the poor had low value and the rule of law had little relevance.
Former President David Granger, speaking on his programme – The Public Interest – said that state violence, meaning “…the use of legitimate governmental authority to cause unnecessary harm and suffering…” was most evident in extrajudicial killings. He recalled that coroners’ inquests were rarely held to investigate the 1,431 murders in the decade, 2000-2009. He cited, specifically, the police killings of Franz Britton, in January 1999; Linden London, in February 2000; John Bruce, Steve Grant and Antoine Houston in July 2001; and Shaka Blair, in April 2002 as forms of state violence which created the conditions for the eruption of the ‘Troubles’ in 2000-2010.
Mr. Granger expressed the opinion that state violence was triggered by the employment of extra-judicial executions as a means of killing persons designated as ‘suspects’; partisan political interference in the professional management of the Police Force; and resistance to implementing reasonable, regulatory recommendations.
As if to highlight the state’s role in violent killings, the PPPC administration was humiliatingly coerced into convening a Presidential Commission of Inquiry to determine “…whether and to what extent the Minister of Home Affairs, [Jairam] Ronald Gajraj, has been involved in promoting, directing or otherwise engaging in activities which have involved the extra-judicial killing of persons.” The PPPC administration’s condonation of transnational crimes – including back-tracking; gun-running; money-laundering, narco-trafficking and piracy − in the post-2000 years also brought waves of criminal violence to this country and contributed to the high murder rate during the ‘Troubles’.
Granger explained that international organisations continuously compiled evidence of state violence. Amnesty International, for example, reported its concerns about excessive use of force employed by GPF and GDF including unlawful killings and by the “… lack of independent investigations into such incidents…” The US Department of State’s Human Rights Country Report for Guyana in 2002 stated that, not only were there allegations of unlawful killings involving the police but, also, that police investigations into such acts were rarely conducted and that, in general, police abuses occurred ‘with impunity.’ Reports usually iterated charges that, “The most significant reported abuses included potentially unlawful killings by police…”
The former president concluded that public trust in the Police was shattered by tactless offensiveness such as Operation Stiletto in which twelve dozen mostly poor youths from Buxton Village were arrested and detained in October 2005 and, similarly, when six dozen poor youths from Agricola Village were arrested and detained in July 2008. State violence inevitably ignited a ‘cycle of retaliation’ in which hundreds of young lives were lost during the ‘Troubles’, contributing to the proliferation of present-day domestic, gang, sexual, school and verbal violence. He asked, “Do the lives of the poor really matter to PPPC administrations?”
