The brutish beheading of a young mother in Port Kaituma in June is unsurpassed in the history of criminal depravity in Guyana. Even in light of the intensity of intimate partner violence and the increasing frequency of wife-murders, such a vicious atrocity should have been beyond imagination.
Former President David Granger speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – recalled that more than 135 wives and mothers have been murdered, mainly by the fathers of their children, between January 2020 and July 2024. Rural coastland and hinterland villages – in particular, in the Barima-Waini, Essequibo Islands-West Demerara, Cuyuni-Mazaruni and the East Berbice-Corentyne Regions – have become notorious for their high rate of wife-murders. These crimes, inevitably, spawn a horde of motherless children.
Mr. Granger expressed outrage at the shocking brutality of the murders. One woman’s body was found naked and headless; another was clubbed in the head as she slept; a third was shot at close range; another was stabbed eleven times.
The number of murders is equally staggering − surging from 17 in 2020; to 22 in 2021; 28 in 2022; and 47 in 2023. So far, 20 women have been murdered for 2024 and, given the rate of increase, it is likely that 20 more could be killed in the remaining months of the year.
Several factors might explain why men kill their wives, but it is very likely that male experiences and exposure to violence as witnesses of the terrorism during the ‘Disturbances’ of the mid-1960s and the ‘Troubles’ of the early 2000s might have inculcated notions of ‘AK’ masculinity as the path to social control.
The former president expressed the view that the situation has become grievous enough to warrant the promulgation of a national Plan of Action on Women’s Safety to reduce and, eventually, remove, gender-based violence and wife-murders from society. A comprehensive plan that employs scientifically-sound approaches to real, personal, local, social relations could be built on the four policies of promoting social cohesion by mainstreaming policies to meet women’s needs; protecting women’s rights; preventing violence against women and girls and, permitting participation of women, equally with men, in decision-making at all levels.
Laws can punish but they cannot – without an examination and explanation of the causes of the crimes – eradicate the scourge of wife-murders. Effective enforcement through Neighbourhood, Community Policing and Citizens’ Security Programmes can be employed more efficiently by being re-engineered to perform roles in identifying human safety situations which have the potential to become violent.
Impending brutality could be prevented and actual incidents of inter-personal violence should be prosecuted, to the full extent of the law, regardless of the race, region and religion of the perpetrators.
The former president expressed the view that wives do not have to die when marriages fail and that murders are not an inevitable consequence of marital meltdown.
Efforts to eliminate domestic violence should involve endorsing social cohesion policies at all levels; eradicating misogyny at an early age; educating pre-adults as a means of engendering equality; enforcing domestic violence laws at community and neighbourhood levels; increasing expenditure on preventing violence against vulnerable women and enhancing public trust in the Guyana Police Force. Every Guyanese wife is entitled to a happy and safe life in the land of her birth. 󠄀
