ROUGHING UP?

Nov 01, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Today’s column was supposed to have been about more pleasant subjects. However, when I saw the front page of yesterday’s edition of the Kaieteur News, I was forced to scrap my original submission and instead deal with this troubling issue of official torture.
This newspaper has often been condemned for its graphic photographs. The publication of graphic pictures, however, is not something that this newspaper does without any thought; careful consideration is often given whenever such photographs are published.
This newspaper has never printed graphic pictures for their dramatic effect. This newspaper has never published gory pictures simply to sell newspapers. The records would indicate that there is no difference in sales as a result of these photographs.
In publishing such photographs, there are always other considerations. One of the most important is the need to drive home to the Guyanese people the gravity of certain situations as well as to provide incontrovertible evidence that what is being reported is not fabrication and fiction for as readers know, one top government official has accused this newspaper of fabricating news “every single day.”
There is also the need to wake up Guyanese to what is taking place in Guyana, and often this can only be done through the publication of graphic images. Sometimes good taste has to make way for the greater good of our society.
Yesterday, we published a front page photograph of a torture victim. We did not need to, but we did, run an accompanying story. The picture told its own story. It was graphic and it was revealing. We may have spoilt quite a few persons’ appetite but we have made a much larger point about a sore issue in this society, one that we have raised over and over in our op-ed columns: the question of torture.
For weeks now this newspaper has been calling for a response to the allegations of torture leveled against members of the security forces following a report that a resident of one of the islands in Essequibo was placed in an ants nest so as to extract information.
Before that, this newspaper had highlighted the allegations of torture which were leveled against members of the army with respect to their interrogation of two residents of Buxton, an allegation which subsequently led to the statement by one government minister in parliament that the men were “roughed up”.
If what was published in yesterday’s newspaper is what passes for “roughing up” in Guyana, then one should not try to imagine what torture would amount to. Unless something is done to put right what has gone wrong in these publicized cases, one day it will be you and me who could be on the receiving end of a bottle of methylated spirits and a match.
Incidents such as the one highlighted in yesterday’s issue of the Kaieteur News will continue until more and more persons break their silence about what is taking place in Guyana under the PPP. The ruling party in the face of these photographs should condemn the torture that was so graphically displayed; the media association should demand an explanation as to why the media was denied access to the Courts and the government should move towards a commission of inquiry, not a simple investigation but a commission of inquiry into what took place.
It does not matter if the police have a confession statement. Which human being would not confess after having undergone the ordeal of having his/her genitals set alight? No human being deserves to be treated in that way and whoever inflicted those wounds need to be locked away from society for a long, long time.
The opposition in Guyana has to be a smarter opposition. They should seek to have this matter debated in the National Assembly. They should move a motion and put the PPP on the spot, calling for a commission of inquiry into the various allegations of torture. Then when that fails, as it will, they should send a dossier of these alleged acts of torture to Amnesty International. That human rights body should be requested to immediately send a fact-finding mission to Guyana to investigate the many allegations of torture.
In addition to this, the opposition should signal its concerns to the international community, and call on that community to institute visa sanctions against the government until such time as it deals with these allegations of torture.
Until such time as the US, UK and Canadian withhold the visas of government officials and their families, there is not going to be any reversal in what is taking place in the lockups in this country.

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