Latest update June 1st, 2026 12:37 AM
Use of excessive violence spreading like a virus in the disciplined services
Dear Editor,
The death of 34-year-old Edwin Niles from horrific injuries sustained under torture at the Georgetown Prison in Camp Street, allegedly at the hands of a combination of members of the Prison and other disciplined services, reinforces the suspicion that these services are encouraged to get results at any cost when arms or ammunition are involved. Edwin Niles – a man almost at the end of a three-year sentence for possession of marijuana – does not conform to the profile of a vicious murderer that has encouraged the rationalising of torture and use of excessive force in recent years.
The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) joins its voice to those calling for this incident to be investigated impartially and vigorously, not treated — as is the growing practice — as exempt from the normal processes of the law, because members of the Disciplined Services are involved. Charges appropriate to the severity of the crime should be laid promptly, if only to quell the rapid disintegration of official credibility on these issues.
It is difficult to reconcile this particular event with the normal ethos prevailing in the Prison Service. Notwithstanding criticisms of prevailing conditions in the main prisons made by the GHRA and others over time, the Guyana Prison Service (GPS) has taken systematic steps over the years to incorporate human rights training and enlightened programmes into the prison regime.
However, these efforts have been constantly undermined by over-crowding of the prison system, combined with staff shortages, issues over which the GPS exercises no control.
Efforts by the Judiciary to address overcrowding through more flexible bail policies have been rebuffed and ridiculed by short-sighted ministers and other Government agencies.
Nonetheless, the stressful conditions under which the under-staffed Prison Service operates should, in no way, be used to rationalise the horror of Niles’s death. In trying to understand this sudden descent by members of the GPS into extreme brutality, one cannot overlook the alleged early involvement of the GDF in this incident. The concept of ‘Joint Services’ appears in practice to facilitate the transmission of the torture virus and culture from the GDF to the other disciplined services.
The increased savagery of criminal violence in recent times is provoking similar savagery in the response of the disciplined services. In this respect, the criminals and the disciplined services appear to feed off each other.
While priority attention is directed, correctly, at the circumstances of Edwin Niles’s death, the complete silence over how ammunition came into his possession while labouring at the army base Camp Ayanganna is cloaked in silence.
Executive Committee
GHRA
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