Buxton
Editorial
Stabroek News
March 18, 2003
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the unrest that has come to characterise Buxton Village did not start one year ago with the notorious Mashramani jailbreak on 23 February 2002. Rather, it started nearly one year earlier when the Guyana Police Force sent in its dreaded Target Special Squad (TSS) to deal with a minor incident at a place used as a polling station in the general elections of 19 March.
On that occasion, the police indiscriminately discharged tear smoke and shot 16 residents with their riot guns, causing consternation in the village. Coming in the wake of a long series of extra-judicial killings and harassment by the police, this behaviour triggered a spate of angry incidents in which some villagers attacked innocent commuters, many of them Indians, using the public road and railway embankment.
The situation simmered but took a turn for the worse only on 6 April 2002 when the TSS killed Tshaka Blair in his home on the morning of the day of the funeral of Superintendent Leon Fraser, the former TSS deputy commander.
The incident was uncanny; the location was unwise and the killing was untimely. By this time, several factors - the prison escapees, police harassment, and the influence and interference of elements from outside of the village - converged.
The Administration responded strangely to the unrest in Buxton and, in particular, to Blair’s killing. The holding of a coroner’s inquest into the death was delayed. A private charge against Superintendent Merai was withdrawn by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Appeals for the disbanding of the TSS were rebuffed. But the Police and Defence Forces were called out to deal with the disorder.
On 24-25 April, President Bharrat Jagdeo and Opposition leader Desmond Hoyte met, issued a joint statement condemning violence, and agreed to establish several committees to make proposals for social, political, economic and governmental reform.
Buxton became one of the ‘depressed communities’ to be considered under the bipartisan dialogue process between the People’s Progressive Party-Civic (PPPC) Administration and the People’s National Congress-Reform (PNCR) Opposition. Buxtonians themselves drafted proposals for the improvement of conditions in the village, formed a community development group and revived the village market. So far, so good.
Then the inter-party dialogue collapsed, the proposals were abandoned and the problems persisted.
In June 2002, the President ordered the GDF back into Buxton, this time on a semi-permanent basis. But, after eight months, it is apparent that there has been no military solution to the crisis and the Administration seems reluctant to revert to a political solution by discussing the issues the villagers had raised in the first place. After two years, there is still no sign of an early return to normalcy in Buxton.
The village has now become a battlefield, not merely between the security forces and criminal elements, but also between the PPPC Administra-tion and the PNCR Opposition; between Indians and Africans and between outsiders and residents of the village. This 24-month long battle, fought at four levels, has hurt all who have been involved.
Criminal elements have filled the void created by the absence of effective law enforcement and governmental action and administration. Villagers who criticise what is happening are terrorised. Those who have ideas for development are silenced. The market has atrophied. Buxton became an unhappy, unfriendly and unsafe place.
Buxtonians feel that they have been sandwiched between the criminals on the one hand and the security forces on the other. The Administration has an important role to play in rescuing this community from further degradation. If only it would.
