The shocking death of Yohance Douglas at the hands of the police two Saturdays ago has ignited an outpouring of public outrage and sympathy the likes of which has not been seen for a very long time. A lot of it is due to the starkly differing nature of the personalities caught up in this tragedy. Douglas by all accounts was an upstanding and clean-cut citizen who died needlessly at the hands of members of a police force that for many has become a symbol of extra-judicial killings and excesses.
Since last Monday, the University of Guyana Students' Society and other groups have admirably mobilised and held several vibrant and orderly marches, vigils and other forms of protest over the deaths. A large cross-section of society had joined in cutting across all barriers. Each of these events has exuded a genuine sense of outrage, sadness and loss that reflects the senselessness of Douglas' death and has helped to awaken sensibilities to the tidal wave of crime that has consumed the country. The depth of the feeling over Douglas' tragic death has been powerfully transmitted.
It is that depth of feeling and the expression of it that has been unfortunately lost to the general public for the last year or so. In the mayhem that ripped through the country since the February 23 jail-break last year literally hundreds of lives have been scarred permanently by the bestiality and brutality that rained down on hapless householders, businessmen, policemen and others. Twenty policemen alone have been callously murdered along with dozens of ordinary people who had committed no crime.
Yet, during the year of the unrelenting spree of murder and violence, the society as a whole has failed to register the appropriate outrage, horror and deprecation of what has transpired. There have been individual efforts by GIHA, WAVE, sections of the media, some prominent citizens and others to draw attention to the sickening violence and to help return some normality to lives that have been wrecked by the loss of loved ones and the trauma of violence and terror. But it has not been a mass outpouring. It has not cut across all barriers. It has not been powerfully transmitted. It is as if all of Guyana had been restructured into two camps which never feel pain simultaneously or commiserate with the other.
That could be the only explanation for why villagers on the East Coast, in particular, feel so demoralised, abandoned and cut off. Apart from always feeling vulnerable because of the inability of the government and the security forces to adequately protect them, there is a feeling of alienation and of not belonging anymore to places that have always been their homes. Hence the flight of a number of them from villages including Vigilance.
Perhaps the problem is the difficulty in deciding where mass protests against crime can be channelled. One can hardly pick out a location where bandits and murderers are believed to be holed up and vent one's frustrations. That, however, doesn't stop mass protests calling on the government or the police or the army to do more. Neither does it stop the convening of vigils or marches or other such expressions of concern. But for the victims of the year of crime, such action has not materialised on a scale sufficiently recognising the gravity of the depredations.
The victims have also been further traumatized by the entrenched safe havens for criminals which exist in Buxton/Friendship. For more than a year this has been the case. Every time the issue arises each person likes to believe that those harbouring and abetting the criminals in Buxton/Friendship comprise an insignificant minority. With each passing day, the belief grows more and more dubious. In the very least, that minority rules these areas with an iron fist and the good citizens are unable to muster the outrage or fear for their lives at the hands of the criminals. Either way, the hosting of the criminals continues. An executive of the Georgetown Chamber was kidnapped last week and taken to Buxton after his wife had been shot at and injured. Thankfully he was able to flee with his life.
Maybe the rest of society is waiting for the victims themselves - the spouses, parents and children of the dozens of slain policemen, businessmen, businesswomen, householders and others - to do this for themselves. Perhaps, they have to organise the marches, candlelight vigils and meetings with the decision makers and others who have the necessary influence and who can demand justice and be certain of getting it.
There is a palpable deficit in the representation of the despair, concerns and pleas for justice from those who have been so savagely victimised over the last year. Those who have organised on behalf of young Yohance Douglas have admirably shown the way. Maybe in time Yohance will come to symbolise a society's discontent with injustice and the shrugging off of numbness to the tragedy of our fellow neighbours, villagers and citizens. Time will tell how far we go in recognising each other's pain.