Guyana should rid itself of the death penalty

Aug 07, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor;
The Government of Guyana must respect human rights, at least by its laws. When state servants commit acts against basic human rights of its citizens, and fail to release people where there is no evidence of criminal acts, one knows that the Government is deliberately suffocating the rights of its citizenry.
Failure to amend the governing Acts compounds the problem since such Acts get continually perpetrated ad nauseaum against people going about their daily affairs, and is to be considered lax and inexcusable.
Some states participate in torture prior to a person being charged with any offence or tried by someone of competent faculties. Some of them, by killing people after they are found guilty, are really absolutely denying that such a person as a human being has a right to life. Guyana I strongly feel participates in both streams of the spectrum.
As well, since some governments take a very long time to actually carry out the death penalty this, in itself, violate the human right of such a prisoner, under the cruel and inhumane criteria.
Guyana, as a signatory to the United Nations International Convention on Human Rights, must not hypocritically break that Covenant – It is time therefore for us to do away with the Death Penalty.
Research has been conducted for over four decades in various universities around the globe, and the result is always the same – the death penalty does not act as a deterrent. In fact, these research show the opposite – that when a person is aware that he or she can face the death penalty when a crime is being committed by them, they tend to kill rather than just maim, or leave alive their victims.
If a state dabbles in censorship of the media, whether subtly or otherwise, and dictate the public servants’ rights to challenge their suspensions or dismissals, in fair and transparent procedures, under the labour laws, it becomes obvious that the country do not believe in human rights, in principle, or otherwise.
As a lawyer, I have seen over the years some detainees being held in unofficial locations – even in rooms with absolutely no ventilation or light – might as well throw such a person in a hole and cover that person up, while he or she is alive as there is no difference in such actions by state servants.
I have been involved in a recent case where the police from a different area, what I would dub as “kidnapping” two little children (one 4 years old, the other two) and taking them for a “journey to some scary place”, while arresting their young mother and taking her in handcuffs some 50 miles away, into another Region, them as well as the mother into custody, despite the grandfather being there to care for the minors – what cruelty!
And to compound matters, when the magistrate recognized those facts, such a state servant became only concerned with whether the children were finally released, nothing else seemed of essence.
Police, over this century and the last, are known for holding detainees in stress positions, and denying food, water and medical treatment. Critical thinking by any of the Police Administrators would clearly tell them that such atrocious work ethics is unwanted and uncalled for, and not a societal norm in the world today. Thus my call is for the appropriate Minister of Government to please rid Guyana of its Death Penalty.
Mohamed Zafar,
Lawyer
Windsor, Canada

1 thoughts on “Guyana should rid itself of the death penalty”

carl veecock August 7, 2016 at 12:01 pm

Pure hogwash!
Quote:”.. by killing people after they are found guilty, are really absolutely denying that such a person as a human being has a right to life”
1. who started it?
2. who committed the first act of killing?
3. who did not treat the victim ‘as a human person’?

Pure hogwash!
The death penalty should remain on the books
and in fact put into use.

I say so emphatically!