Jungle justice

JUNGLE justice has been on a rise in this country, which has taken frightening dimensions in the name of community protest, culminating in situations suggestive of enforcement agencies being unable to cope with such mob action and mayhem as well as revealing something politically afoot.

No one in his or her right mind should welcome such unfortunate situations in communities where industrious people strive daily to eke out a living in trying circumstances, only to find out, in unpleasant ways, that any modicum of security cannot protect them from the misguided marauders.

This shameful, swift and explicit condemnation in clear terms must be expressed towards vandalism and hooliganism, and the culprits should be brought to book. A collective and clarion call of condemnation must be consistent in all sections of Guyana if we are to make progress towards any form of shared anything.

The recent protest, guided by the “No justice, No peace” slogan by residents of the East Coast of Demerara for the killing of Quindon Bacchus allegedly by police, rightly or wrongly so, which ended up in jungle justice against the Mon Repos Market vendors, is one of many protests and violence directed at one particular ethnic group, mainly Indians, going back to the 1960s, 1990s, 2000s and at Cotton Tree in 2020.

The assault, robbing, and destruction of Indian properties have been intergenerational and circular, revealing deep rhizome roots. We must negate such ongoing behaviour and foster an agency grounded in civility and respect for law and order. We support this form and fashion of protest, hands down.

While we wait for this justified call to be practised in future protests, any sign that violence will not surface again is tantamount to travelling through Guyana and not recognising coconut trees.
Equally troubling is that the practitioners and backers of jungle justice believe in their minds that nothing wrong had happened, justified by their determination to have justice by any means possible and egged on by the Opposition, their loyal and support epicenter.

One political activist of the Opposition, not known for darling views, hedges that the anti-government protesters would grow in strength from protest to protest, fatalising rather than fertilising, the whole notion of citizenship and promoting ungovernability. This is a rather impure way of viewing your fellow citizens when faced with challenges. Are Indians really welcome in Guyana?

Furthermore, one wonders if the Opposition had a deeper hand in the anti-government violence at Mon Repos. This wonder, among others, has become increasingly believable since the Opposition has been peddling preposterous propaganda that the PPP was installed into office supported by loose social media operatives, not recognised as a legitimate media entity, shouting that the killing of Bacchus was extrajudicial murder.

Let the legal system take its course since such a position may not be locus standi in court and does not bode well for nation-building towards a One Guyana in an ethnically divided country.
What the protest suggests, in a larger sense, is dedicated support for the Opposition which is looking not to understand what the State is, but how the State should function, preferably in line that the Opposition is still in power.

This is warp and misguided thinking, proving that the Opposition is still trapped in a false sense of power and domination, a perverted practice that led to its removal from office through an electoral process.
Amid the Mon Repos mayhem, however, one should not ignore the vendors who are saddled with the burden of making ends meet, and who understandably do not have the patience to analyse the assault and trauma on them, at least strategically.

They are quick to make their minds up that the time has come to protect themselves by any means possible, and even seek the path of reprisal, given the ethnic dynamics and sentiments associated with the vandalism and terror.

Moreover, the violence and mayhem along the East Coast Demerara corridor have led to the disturbance of an amicable traditional culture and the re-continuation of binary antagonisms, cultural and political, mirroring we versus them diction.

We certainly do not want or prefer either micro-cultural or political situations. The path of protest must follow in the vein of democracy, no less, no more, standing for and reflecting responsible individualism. Blind loyalty to any cause is a dangerous thing.

Then there is the law enforcement agency, the police, and soldiers, to which much has already been discussed of its professionalism, missing in action in the first stages of the mayhem, and laid-back approach allowing the unlawful protest to go on for hours and miles.

What is overwhelming is that in an environment where strange things have happened in the past one would expect that the law enforcement agency would have sensed something strange was about to happen since no permit was given to anti-government protesters. Was the law enforcement agency playing up to a familiar script of the past?

The main concern, of course, is how future situations of jungle justice can be forestalled. Some charges have been laid, which may serve as a deterrence that law and order take precedence over terror and violence.
One suggestion is more local forces must be set up in local communities with the help and guidance from the larger law enforcement agencies, known as more initiative-taking community policing (lomarsh.roopnarine@jsums.edu).

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