Stabroek News
July 28, 2001

The PNC REFORM (PNC/R) will hold a mass protest meeting at the Square of the Revolution tomorrow at 6:00 pm in the wake of the fatal shooting of three men by police at the junction of Mandela Avenue and Industrial Estate Road on Thursday.

All citizens are invited, the PNC/R said.

The party in a press release yesterday stated that it viewed "with alarm and horror the latest extra-judicial killings by the Special Target Squad, popularly known as the Black Clothes Police."

The party declared that "it is time that the leaders of civil society recognize the great danger to the society and the State posed by [these] wanton killings in circumstances amounting to murder. It is time they raise their voices in protest before it is too late."

Further, the PNC/R said it will organise a protest march on Thursday through the streets of Georgetown, and all concerned citizens are invited to join.

The party has also written to the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs demanding an early meeting of the National Assembly to discuss what it termed "this latest atrocity."

According to the release, the police gunned down the three young men on Thursday "in full view of many citizens."

The PNC/R asserted that the summary killing of people alleged to be persons "wanted by the police" had reached alarming proportions and a clear pattern was emerging.

"The Black Clothes Police have constituted themselves accusers, judge, jury and executioners, and have been gunning down people with impunity," the party posited. "PNC/R will continue to denounce these extra-judicial killings and demand that justice be done...this cancer in our society must be eradicated before it engulfs all of us."

The release noted too that the party has in the past issued press statements, held press conferences, marches and public meetings to protest against extra-judicial killings.