Police, Riots and Protests

Aug 05, 2012 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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In the wake of the unfortunate killings of three protesters in Linden there are calls, once again, for ‘reforms’ of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) – most recently by the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA). Not too surprisingly, the GHRA did not demand the composition of the force be proportional to the population of the country.
It’s not surprising, because even through before independence we had committed to creating a Police and Army that was ethnically proportioned, there has been a studied refusal to comply. We can go back to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) 1965 directive that mandated 75% of all future police recruits be drawn from the Indian-Guyanese community until the imbalance was rectified.
Ashton Chase, a founder of the PPP – and a perennial insider – speculated that the party, “allowed these recommendations to go a-begging for fear of being stigmatized as an ‘Indian’ party.” In light of persistent reports of mutinous rumblings within the forces, it’s also possible the PPP has been paralysed by the possibility of a military coup. After riots greeted the PPP’s electoral victory in 1992, the B.O. Adams Commission of Inquiry recommended that “the Police Force be more ethnically balanced and that the Government have a riot response plan to contain any future recurrence.”  Nothing, however, was done, and by 2003, Indians were still not more than 10% of the force (also the army).
We had advocated the rectification of the ethnic imbalance for the same reason that Dr Jagan had done so in the 1960s. The preponderance of African Guyanese in the disciplined forces led politicians from that community to believe they could advocate extreme behaviour, even violence, without sanctions. The latest overt expression of that sentiment was Tacuma Ogunseye’s “riot act” speech before the 2011 elections.
But the refusal to acknowledge the institutionalised discrimination against Indian parity in the forces formed the basis of the wider rot in the institution. In the sixties, the Inquiry into the Wismar ethnic cleansing detailed how the police and Volunteer Force Units stood by as atrocities were committed. In the eighties, the kick-down-the-door-bandits were generally servicemen or used their weapons. The epicentre of the 1998 riots in Georgetown, in which hundreds of Indians were beaten and molested without police intervention, was the Stabroek Market area – just a stone’s throw from the Brickdam Station. Most police know that ultimately they are living a lie, a lie that is transmuted into all sorts of unprofessional behaviour.
Whatever the reasons for the inaction on proportionality, the contradictions arising from de-professionalised forces did not disappear: violence rose to unprecedented heights – and unexpected breadth – after 1998. Today, we do not hear a word of Inquiries into the hundreds of innocent civilians, mostly Indians, who were murdered by ‘bandits’ and ‘resistance fighters’: just about those killed by a thoroughly deprofessionalised police force in which elements were ‘for hire’.
In 2003, under direct Constitutional mandate, a Disciplined Forces Commission (DFC) took submissions across the country on how to professionalise the Forces. They submitted their recommendations in 2004 to Parliament. On the matter of ethnic representativeness they declared: “The Commission…is of the view that the allaying of ethnic security fears which stems from the predominance of Afro-Guyanese presence in the GPF must be addressed…but to ensure, in so doing, that no similar insecurity fears are caused in the Afro-Guyanese community.”
Exactly as we had proposed in our submission, the DFC recommended, “It should be an aim (of the GPF) to achieve a Force representative of the ethnic diversity of the nation without employing a quota system.”
The DFC’s Report was buried in Parliamentary Committees for six years and finally approved by Parliament in 2010. We’re still awaiting news as to whether the ethnic imbalances have been addressed.
David Granger had claimed after the pellet-shooting of the GECOM-count protesters in Georgetown that the police did not shoot at Indian protesters at Albion in 2001. This lie was repeated by the Region 10 Chairman after the unfortunate killings of three Linden protesters. The lie was nailed when a letter-writer pointed out that Mohammed Shamshuddin had been shot and killed by police fire from the Albion Station. There was never an Inquiry into this canecutter’s murder. Ironically, the people of Albion had been protesting lack of police protection from bandits.
As for orders to shoot protesters, I share this anecdote. After Shamshuddin’s murder, I was at the head of a very large group of protesters marching towards the Albion Station. As we approached we were confronted by a squad of “Black Clothes” Police. They all had automatic weapons, each with an extra cartridge strapped to their guns. The head of the detail called me forward and told me they had orders to ‘shoot to kill” if we marched on the Public Road in front of the Station. I had no reason to doubt him – there were no teargas or pellet shotguns in sight, just automatic weapons.
I persuaded the riled up crowd to march in the street behind the station. I would be interested to find out what the Inquiry will show the leaders at Linden advised the protesters about blocking the bridge and what orders the police had.

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