OPINION: Police violence — extensions of State injustices

Last Updated on Saturday, 12 April 2025, 20:50 by Writer

By GHK Lall

Police violence is always hard to accept. Excessive police violence is a huge problem anywhere, one that shows its deformed face too often in Guyana. Lethal encounters with agents of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) in murky circumstances have cast a pall of distrust, leaves much dishonor on members of the GPF, including the professional and disciplined ones. One lethal development in Linden involving a man allegedly unarmed is the last situation that the management of the GPF would wish for, is what drags under the microscope, and sends rushing for answers. The GPF’s fatal shooting within 24 hours of a protestor over that first killing is too much to absorb, too much to tolerate. Two separate police killings in less than 24 hours. How does anyone justify these actions?

President Ali has said all the right words, using the proper tones. There are no words so soothing that they can bring back the two dead in Linden. How many more have to die in such circumstances, never, ever, convincingly resolved? How long will killings of this type go on? Of what value are those seemingly appropriately solemn words following, when they give the sense of having been canned for such eventualities? The next police killing will confirm or condemn the significance of my questions. I regret this deep down, but cannot hold back from saying, sharing: there will be other killings. Same source.  Same victims. Similar locations. What is there to dissuade me (or anybody) to think, to speak and to write with this searing pungency when there is a such a veritable cascade of injustices cutting a wide swath through this land? Violence taking one form, then another, then many others, some of a new and unique strain. And always from the top down, and with the cold fingers of suspicion pointing all the way to up there.

President Ali will go through his motions of piety and sympathy, at which he should be well versed by now having had more than reasonable amount of practice. The courtesy due to his office, not necessarily he himself, will help the powerfully grieving to manage their raw emotions, guard against any justified explosion of raw passion. Whatever mysterious forces help the family members to be civil in such draining personal circumstances do not apply with the same intensity in communities driven to hostility. And, who knows what more.

It has been my belief for a long time now that Guyana is a society on edge. I urge returning to that statement that has so much meaning: a cascade of degrading injustices that swamps the consciousness of Guyanese. Not all of them. But sections of them. Not all of the time. But enough of the time. When voices are taken away, thinking is all but snatched out of hand, then it is always only a matter of time for the callousness of the State to get out of hand, and a life to be taken away in the most jarring sequence of events. Not one life, but two. Not one deadly GPF shooting, but a second.

The PPP Government will have its script ready for the reading. So, too, will the GPF brass. But what do one or the other matter? When the majority of citizens are seen as dirt, and treated as lesser life forms (dirt), then it is surprising that more of these dangerous and deadly deteriorations have not occurred. As a sign of government’s sincerity, there may be a commission to inquire what happened, how it happened, and who is responsible. Like the one for the horrendous Mahdia Dormitory Inferno, Guyanese will get what they get. A plaster to ease their bleeding, and a bed of nails to remind them of recklessness, injustice, and the coverups.

By now, there is a pattern to these lethal brutalities. The sound of guns, the sound of falling bodies, and the sound of damage control. The first sound is thunderous, the second is the dullest of rustles, while the third resounds with the chants favored by sorcerers. In a country where a citizen could be shot like a dog in the street, some proud men, those who are the best at being loud, still have the extraordinary indecency to trash-talk about democracy. In a real country, one with the rule of law and standards having their honored place, there would be that indefinable something that is palpable justice. Not of some constable or junior street coordinator caught in the ugly moments of Guyana’s times. But of those responsible for an environment that is roiling because the people in it believe that they are being disrespected, diminished, and drained of their dignity.

Once more, there is another gunshot from an arm of the State, with another citizen crumpling for the last time. Once again, there will be rushing to put the best face on circumstances that lacerate the spirit. There will be calls for calm. There will be cries over the injustice, cries for justice. And when those storms pass by, there will be that next police killing waiting. Last, there will be leading politicians dusting off their hymns and rhymes. All that those do is exhibit their patented hypocrisies, and lay bare their wanton dishonesties. They have made this Guyana. They own this whirlwind.