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Human Rights Association says torture becoming systematic

Nov 01, 2009 News

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA), responding to the latest allegation of torture by the security forces, has said that cases of torture are no longer isolated, but are becoming systematic.
The Association said that the revolting brutality meted out to suspects in the murder of Region Three former Vice-Chairman, Ramnauth Bisram, reveals the depth of depravity accommodated by the Guyana Police Force (GPF).
The GHRA noted desperate efforts by the Police to conceal the condition of the accused persons from family members, and also to exclude the media from Wales Magistrates Court.
Such incidents in the Disciplined Services are becoming an accepted norm, occurring with frequency and with no consequences for perpetrators, the Association said.
“ Indeed, the highest political authorities have justified covering-up previous incidents of torture by preventing effective investigation, blocking publication of reports, downplaying the seriousness of torture in Parliament and repeatedly referring to ‘killing’ or ‘eradicating’ criminals rather than adopt language which promotes the rule of law,” the GHRA added.
The Association said yesterday’s media coverage of this most recent instance in the official Guyana Chronicle makes no reference whatever to preventing media access to the court. Comments in that newspaper on the brutality were restricted to noting that the defence counsel requested the man be allowed to be examined by a private doctor because she did not trust the public doctor.
The GHRA posited that in recent years ruling politicians have utilised the crisis created by the East Coast upheavals and atrocities such as perpetrated by the ‘Fine Man’ gang to encourage responses of equally unbounded cruelty – All justified under the rubric of a “war on terror.”
This misguided philosophy is sufficiently entrenched as to render such terms as “Disciplined Services” or ‘forces of law and order’ inappropriate to describe this sector, the Association stated.
“While there is no doubt elements within the Disciplined Services who are as shocked by this behaviour as other citizens, they are badly served by leaders who are too compromised with the political order to provide the independent professional leadership this sector now requires,” the Association declared.
It further said that the recent refusal by the Guyana Government to have external monitors attached to the GPF as part of the UK-financed security sector reform programme is better understood in light of abuses such as this, rather than by sanctimonious references to sovereignty.
The GHRA called on civil society organisations, particularly the religious communities, to confront the violence perpetrated by the Disciplined Services and deplore the official protection that it enjoys.

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