LEADER of the opposition, David Granger, recently tabled a Motion in the House in which he is asking for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry (COI) to investigate certain killings, deemed extrajudicial in some quarters, in the early 2000s.

During the period in reference, political analyst, Freddie Kissoon had written a seven part series on the subject of reference, in which he also looked at the integral role some prominent members of the Guyanese society played in the matter.
It is now opportune, perhaps to revisit these essays. The first part in the five-part series was published in our Sunday edition. Today we carry Part III.

Part III  —  Tired Men in Black
IN our opening segment, we did say that some insight will be provided into the modus operandi of Ocean Eleven, how the regime perpetuated itself, why it descended to savage anti-Indian levels and why it chalked up a long life that lasted for almost a year and a half.
But this is the contradiction about the Buxton conspiracy. It wasn’t a political vanguard; it had no political style or ambition, yet it was kept alive through a conducive, political climate. When we come to discuss its longevity, readers will see that if the Americans did not intervene, Ocean Eleven would have replenished its staff and stock and continued to kill with open and encouraged impunity because the political climate in Guyana made for its continuation, especially the role of the GDF.

In ‘part two’ we looked at its early beginnings with the jailbreak. But this still doesn’t explain why it started; we discussed how it got going. But what was the purpose of the life of Ocean Eleven?
Here is where the analyst will now have to speculate because it was almost impossible to unearth evidence of a plan either by ACDA and/or the PNC to bring Ocean Eleven into existence. The modicum of intelligence available so far points to a group of Afro-Guyanese extremists with links to both ACDA and the PNC but not within the upper hierarchy of either organization who felt that the time had come for an armed Black uprising against the PPP government.
One of these men had an emotionally uncontrollable grudge against the government, another had extensive contacts with disgruntled former GDF personnel, and some had little patience with Desmond Hoyte.
There is no evidence available at the moment that the top leaders of ACDA or the PNC knew about the jailbreak plan, but once it happened and the Douglas tape was made, both ACDA and the PNC and the trio that makes up the WPA leadership – Desmond Trotman, Clive Thomas, and Tacuma Ogunseye (who was essentially an advisor to the PLM) – saw political usefulness in the Buxton factor.

But here is where matters become complicated. In the opening section of this series, we did say the Buxton conspiracy has no similarity in global political history. When and where in the past did major political organizations with parliamentary power in a democratic society support a criminal movement with serial rapists and saw political changes coming out of the activities of this anti-social, venal, semi-civilised grouping? Is there anyone out there who believes that Shawn Gittens was executed by the PLM because of his sexual mauling of a relative of the PLM? Gittens, along with Melroy Goodman and Inspector Gadget, was a serial rapist. Gittens raped two women, one named Gittens (no relation) during a robbery at Non-Pariel. My own feeling is that the PNC’s tactical condoning of Ocean Eleven will haunt them at election time in 2006 even if Raphael Trotman is made the presidential candidate. As for the WPA, it is virtually dead. In an ironic twist, the year-long activities of Ocean Eleven have catapulted Ryhaan Shah onto the political scene that may have implications in 2006.

The operations of Ocean Eleven, like its endurance, were made possible by the ambience of hardened political instability in Guyana. For Ocean Eleven to operate with full freedom, the Guyana Police Force had to be demobilized. The GPF’s inability to contain Ocean Eleven was made worse by the “dubious role” of the Black Clothes in the Thomas Carroll scandal.
What in fact took place during the rampage of Ocean Eleven was the incapacitation of the GPF on three fronts. First, the government did not give the GPF the green light to go in and confront Ocean Eleven. The reason for this was that the government feared that it would have caused a disastrous backlash. And indeed that would have happened. Sources told this writer that had the Black Clothes and riot squad gone into Buxton and tear into Ocean Eleven, once there were civilian causalities, a racial confrontation would have gripped Guyana because Victoria, Golden Grove, Ann’s Grove and Bachelor’s Adventure were coming out. And Enmore would have reacted to the pincer movement of Golden Grove.

The police drive in Buxton would have resulted in civilian deaths, maybe an alarming number, for three reasons.
(A) – a lot of Buxtonians saw Ocean Eleven as political people, not criminals, and this was because the extremists activists like Mr. Wild Man, Mr. Natty Dread, Tacuma Ogunseye, Soloman’s talk-show friend, and two former GDF officers would go into Buxton and preach to Buxtonians about the virtue of what Ocean Eleven were doing.
(B) – Ocean Eleven cultivated the loyalty of a number of child soldiers, like the ones who killed Ginga and Haroon Rasheed, and were prepared to use them as human shields once the battle had begun. These child soldiers, armed with communication devices, acted as lookouts and one of them killed the GDF lance corporal that triggered an emotional rage in the army.
(C) – some Buxtonian civilians were prepared to protect Ocean Eleven with their lives. We saw this clearly when a contingent of the GDF cornered some men who had committed a daring robbery in Annandale, and as the soldiers moved in to effect an arrest a group of women enveloped the criminals and dared the soldiers to shoot.

Secondly, the GPF was demoralized by the incessant and cruel demonization of its members by the PNC; WPA; ACDA; the talk show hosts; Mike Mc Cormack and his personal outfit, the Guyana Human Rights Association; and the television newscasts with the exception of GTV 11 and MTV 65. Even when CNS started up its news programme, it sought to put the police in a bad light.
What this relentless pulverization of the GPF did was to embolden Ocean Eleven. As a spin off from this, it generated intense resentment by the village against the police. One nuance of police-Buxton relation that has never been discussed since Buxton exploded was that the villagers cultivated a dislike for the police long, long ago – during Burnham’s rule.
At that time, Buxton was seen as a WPA enclave. Burnham used the police to terrorise the youths there. The Georgetown extremists who conducted political classes for the PLM drove the nail further in the coffin. The GPF was then effectively shut out of Buxton. The clamour about extra-judicial killings was simply a pretext by the political supporters of the PLM and Ocean Eleven to fuel the flames of anti-police fire.
Guyana has one of the lowest rates of extra-judicial killings even in CARICOM when compared to Jamaica and Trinidad.
Thirdly, the death toll among members of the GPF was too much to keep the spirits of the GPF alive.
When one of the two phantom squads cornered Dale Moore, Mark Fraser and Frank Soloman, it was as if the GPF had gotten a gift from heaven.
The GPF stood by helplessly and watched Ocean Eleven kill its members and the citizens of Guyana like when you swat flies. The men in Black had collapsed and terror had taken over the land until Stephen Lesniak turned up at the Lusignan golf course.