Guyana: The presence of fear, the absence of humanity

Feb 04, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One morning in the last week, as I was walking on the seawall with my dog, policeman Roy Profit, of the TSU office, drove up alongside and began to discuss with me the topic of random traffic stops. A vehicle drove up behind Profit’s, and thinking that he was blocking the pathway, Profit went his way. But the car did not proceed. The driver slowed up and indicated that he wanted to have a discussion.
It was not a good time for me and I told him so. He informed me about his problem. He worked for fourteen years at the GRA and was interdicted from duty while the police investigated GRA’s complaint against him. The police found no illegality was committed, but the GRA wrote him a dismissal letter without specific reason(s) for termination. I told him what he was telling me made no sense. Before I went into my car, I cited the case of Nizam Hassan. He was charged for conspiracy to procure money under false pretence, acquitted, and returned to his public sector job. I gave him my mobile number and asked him to call me later that morning. He did
I agreed to investigate his complaint against the GRA and write about his plight. I was pellucid that I will have to name him. He did not want to be identified. I indicated that I cannot make those accusations against the GRA without specifics, because I could be accused of fictionalization. I told him if his story is true, he should go public, because fourteen years of his life just went down the drain. His cry was fear of victimization. That was the end of that.
I ended the conversation with that fellow somehow feeling that there are factual dimensions to his story, but he chose to let the file close. I encounter dozens like him each year. People’s lives are ruined through terrible abuse of power in both the private sector and the public sphere, but the ocean of fear in them drowns their willingness to go public. So they suffer forever in silence.
This ubiquitous fear in Guyanese is incomprehensible. It may be a macabre expression of abnormal nature that one may not find in another country. Even in a repressive country like Iran, the youths violently exploded two weeks ago. The existence of this culture of fear is equally matched by a ubiquitous human callousness to suffering that almost may have no parallel elsewhere.
Seawall vendors complained to me that the area is in total darkness in the nights because the authorities turned off the lights. I saw the uncivilized site for myself and did an entire column on it. Then a prominent Amerindian gentleman penned a letter in all the dailies about the trepidation he felt when he took his grandchildren there. He said that he cut short his visit because the darkness provides a huge opportunity for criminals. The Stabroek News also took up the issue.
The organization you would think that would have immediately spoken up and condemned this Faustian pit of darkness would have been the tourism officials. Each day, each night one can find foreign visitors to Guyana on that stretch of seawall from the bandstand to the Kitty pump station. It was morally imperative for the tourism officials to condemn the decision of the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (the ministry’s cited vandalism as its reason). To date, there isn’t even a whisper from that section about this nonsense.
This country does not have a functioning consumer rights entity. This country does not have an active human rights organization. Not even one lawyer utters even one word about the inhuman court decisions that are made in the magistracy. An 18-year-old girl is jailed for six months for going to Suriname with a speedboat at Springlands. The charge was leaving Guyana illegally. A sixty-five year-old, physically challenged man is denied bail for possession of a few grams of cocaine. An interior resident is remanded for possession of illegal ammunition.
If you did not read my column on this unbelievable farce, let me repeat it. He was found with one spent shell. Do you believe that? If you have a normal mind you wouldn’t. It is simply not possible. It is simply not believable. Yes, one spent shell. This is a country that jails poor people for three years on the charge of possession of a smoking utensil.
Let me end with what I asserted in my last Sunday column. You may not like Donald Trump. But he is right. The world has shithole/shithouse countries. Guyanese live in one of them.

2 thoughts on “Guyana: The presence of fear, the absence of humanity”

Derek Drakes February 4, 2018 at 12:28 pm

Who is the writer of this article. I love it.
marabunta February 4, 2018 at 5:50 pm

Good article, keep it up, name and shame.