The Guyana Human Rights Association is repeating its call for the government to take immediate steps to engage the PNC/R in devising a national consensus to put an end to all criminal and politically-inspired violence.
However, while the anti-crime “initiative clearly lies with the government, the opposition has a responsibility to respond positively,” the GHRA declared in a press release yesterday.
The human rights body stressed that for the two major parties to continue using the crisis primarily to score points against each other is morally and politically bankrupt.
The release stated that people will judge the parties not so much on whether they made a national consensus work, as on their efforts to make it work being sincere.
According to the GHRA, promises by the government of more weaponry, more equipment and more money for the Guyana Police Force (GPF) ring hollow when not accompanied by serious efforts to build a national consensus with the PNC/R on crime fighting. And casting that party in the role of villain in 2002 and invoking the 1960s as proof of this, is not good enough.
The GHRA contended that without demonstrating proof of the current involvement of the PNC/R in crime, the PPP has an obligation to seek the support of that party for a national anti-crime strategy.
Both parties have thus far found it politically convenient to benefit from one kind of violence or another, the human rights body charged, while neither is innocent when it comes to taking political advantage of criminal violence.
The GHRA accused the PPP of protecting criminals in the Police Target Special Squad and the PNC of remaining less than forthright in denouncing the Buxton-based criminal violence of recent months.
Attempts to justify violence by reference to poverty and marginalisation should stop, the GHRA asserted. Such attempts insult the poor and glorify the criminals and the time for ambivalence about violence is over.
The GHRA urged both parties to positively commit themselves to bringing the perpetrators to justice.
Expressing its condemnation of those responsible for the callous and cowardly deaths and related violence of the past week, the human rights body said that these events have taken racial provocation to a new level.
The release argued that the ease with which gunmen in Buxton and elsewhere carried out the latest spate of deadly violence, reinforces the conviction that the government is helpless to protect anyone, especially Indo-Guyanese citizens.
“The Indo-Guyanese community,” according to the GHRA, “bears the brunt of the violence and merits the thanks of the rest of us for not retaliating in kind and thereby pushing the entire society into political free fall.”
Pretence that the government can control the criminal/political violence is a posture whose irresponsibility grows with every new outrage, the release said.
At the same time violence, insecurity and disruption of normal life is not restricted to the Indo-Guyanese community, the GHRA noted.
All, regardless of race, are vulnerable to attack at any time. While Indo-Guyanese communities on the East Coast have the most urgent need for protection, everyone has a legitimate claim on the government for protection and security.
To date the government has failed to respond to that claim, the GHRA concluded.