– As defined by shape-shifting crusades

IN 2016, President Granger pronounced that correcting the wrongs of the PPP was turning out to be very expensive. It was a tremendous understatement, as the damage done to the human mental and spiritual infrastructure far outweighed the physical inanimate failures of the Kato Secondary School and the Skeldon [white Elephant] Sugar Factory etc. In 2017/18 a judge gave a young man 80 years in jail for killing his wife in a fit of rage and another judge, some years earlier, gave a young woman less than nine years for killing her pregnant friend in a fit of pure sadistic envy. Is evil in its instant possessive rush gender different in Guyana, and is there an imbalance in our social and professional consciousness? Don’t misinterpret, one must be punished for crimes.

Murder through instigation and physical execution should be punished with equal severity. Harsh penalties should especially be heaped upon sexual exploiters of children, traffickers in weapons and narcotics. But domestic murder seems to have pivoted into the crusading zone without corrective initiatives visibly applied. That there’s an imbalance in both the upbringing of men versus the not well thought out definitions that the gender crusaders are imposing despite the data existing on the active consciousness of the system towards a confused male generation, must be explored.

The escalation of domestic murders in Guyana skyrocketed in the late 90s and onward as a result of several factors, decline in the economy, the emergence of narcotic trading and the rise of the criminal nouveau riche with its flaunting culture of conspicuous consumption that fragmented perceptions on social worth, with dire effects on the value of manhood and the domestic interaction. Men don’t talk, we don’t complain and advocate our grief. In too many cases we apply the physical force that human culture and philosophy have developed in us as a means to solve problems, and end up losing at the public relations war on the domestic disputes that turn violent. With male aggression as the ‘Poster boy’, seldom in media articles where fatal abuse is featured do the cultural balance between both involved placed in the public domain. Sometimes mental problems were forewarned and ignored.

In 2011 at Ithaca a man killed his reputed wife. He subsequently broke down submitted himself to the police and before the court admitted his guilt. His contention was the constant torment [nagging] about the limitations of his income, which he couldn’t endure, and it exploded into something other. Another situation was with a young cane cutter who gave all he had to his beloved who contended to him that “Cane cutter money can’t do” while inviting another man into her life. He stole his boss’s shotgun and killed them both, and told his story to Guyana. Another told the media that “Meh ketch she once, meh warn she, twice, meh warn she again, de third time meh kill she.” His reference was to her infidelity.

Let’s explore the public reports and warnings. During October 2005 Stabroek News carried a statistical article on ‘30 women murdered in nine months- No sign of abatement in violence against women’. This continued despite reports and appeals, even serial killer type disappearances of women, that dwindled and merged with the disappearance of young men at the hand of the government/drug cartel death squads and random killings. In 2012 Andrew Hicks, Sociologist and Social Worker declared: ‘It is time to treat domestic violence as a public health [issue]’. In February 2012 a US State Department report presented by Anita Botti declared that ‘Sexual violence rates in the Caribbean highest in the world-report’. At home, in January 2013, the Legal Aid Clinic Managing Attorney, Simone Morris-Ramlall declared “Many magistrates lack knowledge to help domestic violence victims.” Also in December of 2013, Tiffany Barry of the University of Guyana related in a broad article that”Our cultural norms reinforce Gender-Based Violence”. Also in January 2014, Stabroek News carried another survey on 2013 that ‘2013 saw 29 domestic violence-related murders’ [of male and female victims] none of the above includes wounding, burning of houses and deaths at the hands of hired assassins by spouses.

What else was not included was the context of the trained male perspective, that we were trained by our mothers and fathers in a certain mould. It was nine years later, January 2014 Kaieteur News under a slogan unchanged: ‘Upsurge in domestic violence – Is enough being done to reach out to young men?’ The article featured opinions by Patrick Findlay, Margaret Kertzious, and Kwame Gilbert. Kertzious [Crisis Coordinator of Help and Shelter] outlined: “They don’t have a shelter for men who are abused and society doesn’t deal with men in an appropriate way…when they complain to the police or go to doctors they are being laughed at, so the whole process has to change, I don’t know how we are going to change it but it has to start from somewhere.”

The final quote and more to the point that ricochets from the criminal culture allowed by the last government came in Chronicle July 7, 2014: ‘Young men under pressure’, Sociologist Patricia Sheeratan-Bisnauth inferred “When you want to get rich quickly which happens among many youths, there is no focus on growth and expansion of one’s self. It’s a get-rich-quick environment we are living in, and that is what the youths and many children are living by.” This article will be concluded next week with a clarification on this aspect of our cultural being.