The call is to have mercy on those brutal killers

Jul 24, 2016 Features / Columnists, My Column

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It is amazing how people can insist that life is sacred at a time when there are those who seem not to care about the other person’s life. A team from the Human Rights Commission descended on Guyana to meet with the local judiciary. The talk was about removing the death penalty from the statutes.
I am one of those people who believe that life is sacred. I celebrate with those among us who live to become a centenarian. We would treasure these people because we see them as repositories of knowledge about the country in which we live.
There was one centenarian I loved. She lived to be 113 and I made it my duty to be with her every chance I got. She had some interesting stories to tell. She provided me with an opportunity to see this country as it was 100 years ago. I saw many things through her eyes. I saw how young people behaved, how they attempted to escape the watching eyes of their elders in society.
My own mother is 92 and I consider myself lucky to still have her. I sat with her 96-year-old aunt just yesterday and chatted with her. Of course the passage of time has taken its toll. Her eyes are dimming, but she is as lucid as the day I met her sixty years ago. She is still mobile.
My visiting sister was with me. When we left we marveled at the longevity of our relatives and we thank the Man above for every day he allows us to enjoy them. And so it is that I am upset when people just snuff out the life of someone. When that person dies we would never know how they would have fared later in life.
A few weeks ago, a colleague, Dale Andrews died. He was 47. His children would never know what it would be like to take care of an elderly father. They would never be able share his experiences when he was their age.
On Friday, I got the news of a triple-murder in Black Bush Polder. Two men and a boy were shot out of hand aback of the village of Mibicuri. Reports are that they had gone to fish. At least someone called them to tell them that there was hassar (an armoured fish and a delicacy) in the canals in the backlands.
The killing was brutal. The three never had a chance. Photographs of the bodies are circulating on the internet. So gruesome are these photographs that a friend, Ralph Seeram, sent a message from his home in Orlando, Florida, begging me not to make these pictures adorn the pages of Kaieteur News.
The Human Rights people have not said a word. It is as if these lives do not matter, but they will rush to say that the state should not mete out the same treatment to the killer. It will not matter that a young boy who had ventured into the backlands with the now dead relatives heard two gunshots, then two more. He was spared the grim sight by a security guard who advised him to go home.
My friend, at least he was before he acceded to the Presidency, tells the world that he would not be putting anyone to death. I can understand his position. Like me, he has an immense value for life, and this has made the human rights people very happy.
But can I afford to be angry if the relatives of those slain cry for blood? They are the people who are hurting. They are the ones who would be devoid of the company that the now dead people provided. Then there is the anger in the community in which these people lived.
What could these people have done to deserve that fate? Word is that one man was the target, but because the others knew the killer they had to die.
There is another murder, this time in the hinterland. A man disappears and his body parts now surface. What manner of evil stalks the land?
We also have the case of a man found in a wardrobe. The police say he was strangled and his killer has been caught. The killer has also reportedly confessed. But he can rest assured that he would not be executed while David Granger is president.
Minister Raphael Trotman made an interesting point about some of the countries that have abolished the death penalty. He pointed to the reaction to the acts of terror that hit those countries. These countries launched blistering attacks against the source of the attacks, killing guilty and innocent alike. He concluded that those countries may not have the death penalty, but they are not averse to applying death to those who dare to kill their citizens.
There is the argument that the death penalty has not been proven to be a deterrent, but the late President Desmond Hoyte once said that should the death penalty be applied then for sure that person would never kill again.
I knew a man who killed twice. The first time he got five years for manslaughter. Then he killed again and was released from prison to marry and live a normal life. I suppose that the demons would always be with him, but who cares. The demons are not deterrents either.
A man kills his children, three of them, and gets to spend about 20 years in jail. He will be out when he is not quite my age, and hopefully, with lots of life. One lawyer said to me that having spent so much time in a prison, the person would not be as healthy as his counterpart who had been living on the outside.
The conclusion, then, is to deny killers their liberty. That is punishment enough. Take away the desire to go to a party, or to enjoy a candy, and a child would do right the next time. Hopefully. But a killer is not a child in our society.
Well I might not have been too accurate there, because we do have our child killers, one of whom would be in jail for at least 60 years. Yet I cannot have any sympathy if the society decides to kill the man who slaughtered those three men in the Black Bush Polder.

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