Chato’s land, the tragic land, and the killing fields 44 years after

May 26, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

We have achieved 44 years of Independence and if you want to see the state of the nation, then take a bus or plane to the interior and lime in Chato’s land.

Chato’s land is the rich interior of Guyana where gold and diamonds make our balance of payment sheet look healthy. Chato’s land should be a protected enclave where the sheriffs and the marshals patrol the length and breadth of the mineral fields.

But Chato’s land is a no man’s land where murder comes easy and a son or husband is gone forever. Another day, another death in Chato’s land.

Back in Georgetown, the killing fields grow larger and the grass steps onto your front porch. In Chato’s land the sheriffs aren’t many so murder is committed with impunity.

Strange though in the urban skyline, the men in black uniform are ubiquitous but like in Chato’s land, killings are perennial as the grass.

In Chato’s land, a mother or a wife waits for the news and the waiting is unbearable.

On the urban horizon, the nation gets the news immediately.

In Chato’s land, the rate of unsolved homicides climbs because the lone sheriff is busy.

In suburban Georgetown, strangely, the Eve Leary investigators are many, their desks are overflowing with papers and the men in shirt-jacs are quickly unto the crime scene for fingerprints but the results are the same as in Chato’s land – unsolved murders compete with Mount Roraima.

Back in the corridors of power, forensics is a name that to the elites means a computer game. A serial killer may be on the loose. A well known actor had his head bashed in and his throat slit on the seawall behind the Ocean View Hotel.

His death becomes a statistic. Weeks after another bashed in head with slit throat, again on the seawall. This time the dead victim has contacts.

He is the adopted brother of the editor of this newspaper, Adam Harris. So I journeyed to the scene of the crime. I am on familiar territory – the Kingston seawall where I roamed as a little ten-year-old boy while my father tended to the cricket pitch at St. Stanislaus Cricket Ground.

I was on the Kingston seawall but I was in Chato’s land alright. Harris’ brother was killed literally about 100 yards from a police contingent that spent the night guarding the Americas cable of GT&T. I approached them and asked if they heard any screaming.

They said no. The horror in the murder of Harris’ brother was that the killer had to know that there was a school of police guards nearby. In Chato’s land, killers aren’t scared of the sheriff because the sheriff is never there.

On the urban landscape nuff policemen patrol the turf but the results are the same as in Chato’s land – murderers liquidate people and disappear into invisibility.

This is Guyana after 44 years of Independence. The cold cases are climbing. A bank employee who was also a national football administrator is shot on the seawall.

There is no robbery. He becomes a cold case. The man who designed and built the Caricom Secretariat is shot on the worksite in a school compound. There is no robbery. He becomes a cold case.

Two activists of the AFC, man and wife, are gunned down at their home. They become a cold case. I can’t go on. There isn’t space. But what about over two hundred youths murdered by people they say belonged to phantom groups.

This is a land with a small population. If in two years more than two hundred homicides occurred, then per capita this country may be the killing fields of the world.

As we reached 44 years of Independence, the chief executive of the land is proclaimed Champion of the Earth after receiving a UN award for environmental protection.

So I journeyed with KN senior reporter, Dale Andrews, to see the earth in an urban suburb named Newtown on the invitation of one of its depressed residents.

What I saw convinced me that if the people at the UN Environmental Agency that gave Mr. Jagdeo his accolade had seen what Dale and I saw then no such award would have been forthcoming. All the alleyways in Newtown, yes all, without exception, have become jungles.

There is no flow of water into the Vlissengen Road trench so the water stays on the land of the residents where floods become their permanent companions.

After 44 years of Independence, the Champion of the Earth may preside over a dead country.

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Chato’s land, the tragic land, and the killing fields 44 years after

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