Secondary impact

Feb 09, 2013 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

---

We are only just starting to experience, if not explain fully, the ‘secondary impact’ on children living in homes, attending schools and growing up in communities where violence occurs.
Twenty years ago, domestic violence was still regarded as a private matter. A man hitting his wife was considered a ‘family affair.’ School fights were dismissed with a shrug and a comment that “boys will be boys.” Arrests by the Police, more or less, were assumed to be legitimate responses to criminal behaviour.
Things have changed. Interpersonal violence has now become an epidemic. It is the most vicious, virulent and prevalent crime in Guyana today. Nowhere is the impact more severe than on the most vulnerable members of society – children and youth.
The stabbing of a four-year-old nursery-school child in Wismar, who died in hospital with a knife still sticking out of his back, was perhaps the most recent and most repugnant child murder, but it is not an isolated case. The chopping to death of sleeping children by their father at Soesdyke was more gruesome.
Achiwuib Village in the Rupununi, one of the most remote communities in the country, witnessed the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old by a 15-year-old student during an altercation on the playfield. At Patentia Village, a 13-year-old student was taken to the hospital to have a pair of scissors which another student threw at him removed from his head. It was also at Patentia that a 16-year-old schoolboy was shot dead by the police at close range in 2010.
Many more incidents of interpersonal violence have been reported in schools. Chief Education Officer Olato Sam has now acknowledged that the Ministry of Education has taken note of the increase in gang-related violence in schools and is aware of the emergence of a youth ‘gang culture’ among students.
Things have changed and Guyana has become more brutish and churlish. Where does violence come from? Dr. Luncheon, who is also Chairman of the Central Intelligence Committee, first described the outbreak of criminal violence in the early years of this millennium as “drug gang warfare.”
Many failed to comprehend how correct Luncheon was. Many failed to see how violent the drug war had become. Many failed to fathom the repercussions of the prolonged violence which claimed the lives of an unprecedented and still undetermined number of policemen and youths.
It would have been impossible for any society to have survived the ‘troubles’ which Guyana endured without suffering the after effects. The bandits, ‘phantom’ gangs’ and rogue policemen caused many deaths. The government ministers responsible for public security during the troubles have much to answer for.
The peculiar practice of stigmatising particular persons in particular villages also became a popular police practice. Police violence, perpetrated under the pretext of investigation, when in fact there was only intimidation, has left permanent scars. The arbitrary arrests, unwarranted detentions, deliberate shootings, torture, deaths in custody and sham trials have had a cumulative, deleterious ‘secondary impact’ on society.
East Bank Demerara residents still recall one of the most notorious cases of political and police harassment during the ‘troubles.’ Armed policemen pounced on five villages – Agricola, Bagotstown, Eccles, Houston and McDoom – and started a systematic round-up of nearly six dozen boys from 30th July to 2nd August 2008. Most victims were minors and all were male. The reason for this unwarranted detention of boys was, simply, that the ruling People’s Progressive Party was preparing for its two-day 29th Congress which was due to begin on Saturday 2nd August at the Diamond Secondary School, eight kilometres from the villages.
The boys were taken away by the police to be photographed, fingerprinted and to have their personal details recorded although they had never committed an offence. Eventually, they were all released without compensation or explanation.
The shameful East Bank crackdown was not the first time that the police force had done that sort of thing. Collective criminalisation was invented during the short, troubled tenure of Ms Gail Teixeira as Minister of Home Affairs. Twelve dozen East Coast Demerara residents of the Buxton-Friendship village complex were similarly “processed” by being photographed, fingerprinted, and having their personal details recorded, by the police.
We can now understand that state violence in the form of Police clampdowns – such as the mass arrests of hundreds of innocent persons in the targeted East Bank and East Coast villages – did not “teach children a lesson” in citizenship. They did have a ‘secondary impact’ of inculcating a mindset of alienation, discrimination and victimisation. Criminalising children is not only illegal; it is illogical, because it will perpetuate the problems that it should be trying to solve.
The PPP/C administration seems never to have been aware of agony, anger and alienation caused by state violence against its own citizens, especially the young. A generation is growing up which has become accustomed to violence. It is clear, however, that violence begets violence. We are witnessing in our homes, schools and streets, the aftershock of the ‘secondary impact’ of years of criminal violence.

---

---