Fires, Bombs and Hearsay: A plan that blew up the prison, finally!

by clairmont chung

Our penal system came out from the enslavement system. Until we recognize that, bigger better prisons would lead nowhere. They too will be filled with the hordes of the dehumanized; and the population desensitized.

(C)INewsGuyana
Survivors of the prison massacre taken for medical attention

The 17 men incinerated at the Georgetown Prison on Thursday, March 3, 2016, are a warning of things to come. It has reached a point where we do not recognize our own contributions to the condition; our fuel to the fire. Fire has been a traditional political weapon to terrorize poor people, and the bomb its most recent incarnation. At no point was this truer than now: a time of the Walter Rodney COI, its delayed report and the Georgetown Prison massacre.

In one week Guyana’s political leadership felt compelled to denounce testimony from one Commission of Inquiry, WRCOI, solely because it came from a convict and then convene another ‘Commission of Inquiry’ at which convicts and would-be-convicts would have to testify. More than likely, as a cruel joke, one of the witnesses could be Robert Gates, inmate and confessed Death Squad member of the Rodney COI fame.

The government alleged Rodney had a plan to blow up the prison. No one knew it would go down like this, 36 years later, and as we await the government’s delayed release of the WRCOI's report on the circumstances of Rodney's death, and with such tragic circumstances. It would be the prisoners themselves claiming the humanity they and Rodney warned had been denied. A fire that may have been set to bring attention to their plight resulted in the deaths of seventeen, so far. Rodney had little to do with this, but had forewarned of events like these. Some listened. Most appear still too afraid to speak, except for attacks against the commission itself.

Attacks against the Rodney COI, and its unreleased report, range from: Testimony from a convict! Hearsay! A joke! Political! Circumstantial evidence! No smoking gun! Too Costly! A burden on the Taxpayers! No truth! After 36 years, too late! PPP atrocities! Beyond a reasonable doubt! ‘Flawed’ is the general and official term. All are ill advised and expectedly conclude that no worthwhile facts could come from such a flawed commission. Of course, it’s a self-serving position.

As expected, the political cardholders echo the sentiments of the leadership. Suddenly, lay-people became legal analysts, but not the lay-people who actually live it and suffer in legal limbo. Some of these analysts would pass by the prison but never heard, listened or cared about the loud cries of the prisoners about conditions, brutality, and trial delays. These analysts and their relatives are good people and have not been victimized by the injustice system in Guyana for the past 50 years; or before, not yet. But had they listened or asked the victims, they would have heard about Sergeant Andrews and Robert Gates, and Fat Keith, the Death Squad and its more recent incarnations with the likes of Axel Williams and the Phantom. They would not have had to wait for the WRCOI or the prison massacre because the sufferers would have told them about the broken justice system and explained the hearsay rule too. Because it appears none of the analysts and their legal advisers understand the rule.

Listen. Hearsay is admissible in all courts and is admitted every day. Hearsay is only inadmissible if it falls outside one of the many exceptions. 

The US Federal Rules of Evidence lists over 20 exceptions to the hearsay rule: there are 20 plus reasons for hearsay to be admitted. It’s even more generous in Guyana. There are occasions in Caribbean legal proceedings where Hearsay Rules are waived entirely. Matters of extradition are an example. Had we really pursued Gregory Smith we would know that.

Explaining hearsay has had little effect. It’s explained in schools and rum shops all over the world. Yet regularly misused even by lawyers and judges. My own position is that the rule be abolished.

The hearsay rule is so old and toothless, even that pirate Sir Walter Raleigh used it in his futile defense against charges of treason and disobeying his King, James I. Raleigh lied and claimed he discovered Guiana, El Dorado, and inflated its stores of gold. He too, like the party faithful, pointed to the lowly ethical standing of the witness against him and the tribunal. He was reputed to have said of a witness,  “This is the saying of some wild Jesuit or beggarly priest; but what proof is it against me?” Nevertheless, Raleigh was executed; beheaded.

Similarly, like hearsay, ‘circumstantial evidence’ is used everyday and perfectly legal everywhere. 

The majority of convicts sitting in that facility near you were convicted on circumstantial evidence; and I mean those who actually received a trial. Most do not. Circumstantial evidence is evidence that one could infer using common sense. The overused example is waking up to see snow, where there was none the night before; one could infer it had snowed overnight. In Guyana, floods would be the fact from which we could infer it had rained. Right. We do not have to see or hear the falling rain.

The term ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’, is part of our everyday language. It helps explain circumstantial evidence. The newscasts and homemade video showed smoke coming from within the prison, and later the charred bodies. From that you could infer there was a fire. No one needed to see the actual flames.

If I told you in a public address that my steel was sharper than your's and to make your wills, and you died shortly thereafter but only after meeting a man in my employ from whom you received a package that exploded and killed you, that is circumstantial and perfectly admissible in any court. It was not the only evidence. There was a charred body.

One analyst stated that there was no ‘smoking gun’ linking Forbes Burnham to the death of Rodney and therefore the ‘findings’ are without basis. Again the term is misunderstood and misapplied. It’s used in that context to mean an eyewitness observation of the accused pulling the trigger; the shooter caught in the act.  If ‘meh nah bin see, me nah bin kno’. If we had to see things to know things we would be a very ignorant bunch. The ‘smoking gun’ is circumstantial evidence. One does not have to see the gun fired, or hear its explosion. If the gun is smoking we can infer that it was recently fired and by someone in control of it. No court, no jury, no commission, no body reviewing facts and law needs a ‘smoking gun’ to find someone was involved in an illegality. If this were a valid rule the prisons would be empty. Sadly, they are filled, overcrowded.

The cost burden to taxpayers. Incredible! The motion to begin the WRCOI was passed in parliament and supported by the current ruling coalition. The coalition did claim, subsequently, it was excluded from the terms of reference.  For 3 years prior to the start of the COI, the current ruling coalition of parties enjoyed a 1-seat advantage in parliament. And could have martialled a movement to adjust the terms of reference. But that was never its intent. Its intent, at least the senior partners, was always to build a case against the COI itself; knowing that the findings would be damning.

My own assessment of the Terms of Reference was that they were rather lenient and covered a very small slice of what a colleague called, Dangerous Times. Perhaps we need a separate commission to review the work done by Guyana’s Death Squads in building our democracy since independence. This would include the 30 murders Robert Gates testified he witnessed or is aware.

The charge of Political! Perhaps, it’s the worst of all the attacks. What in Guyana is not political? If a pothole is fixed in one area and not the other; that’s a political problem. The plan did not work for the PPP. No racial conflagration erupted as a result of the terms of reference as the PNC feared. The masses are smarter than the analysts give them credit.

The idea of the APNU coalition was political: Wasn’t it designed partly to counter the expected findings of the WRCOI, the whole Rodney episode, and silence the WPA into a kind of fake national reconciliation with Rodney as the political football? The WPA brought no measureable numbers to the game. The idea worked, at least partially, to isolate the PPP, but the PPP had already done more than enough to defeat itself. Jimmy Carter was not even needed, again.

36 years! Too late! Diminished memory! Some very intelligent people cried. Some of these same people are leading the reparations movement for atrocities committed several hundred years ago; beginning in the 15^th century and ‘ending’ in the 19^th century. One of the reasons reparations are necessary is the continuing effect of that period of trafficking in the bodies and forced labor of Africans, in the main, on our lives today. Similarly, that period, the dangerous times, continues to have an effect on our lives today. Recently, Mau Mau warriors received compensation for torture suffered in the 1950s at the hands of the British during the war for Kenya’s liberation. I heard no murmurs from these same intelligent people about the age of that claim, fading memory, and the like. But the 1980s, well that’s too long ago. Unbelievable.

On atrocities in that period, it’s worth revisiting the origin of the enslavement system and its connection with the current prison system. Its entire purpose was to deter and capture persons seeking freedom. In The Maroon Wars of the 1790s, the Governor of Demerara sent a militia to find and destroy Maroon villages. The militia met the enemy and was severely defeated. The Maroons sent a few stragglers with a message; to never attempt such a mission again because, then, no one would return. The governor, not to be outdone, outfitted a party, trained them for the mission, and included some enslaved peoples because, he reasoned, they were better suited to the rigors knee deep in swamp. He promised them freedom, and included Indigenous Peoples too. He offered 300 guilders for every right hand of a ‘bush-negro’. On the march to engage the enemy they saw the rotting bodies of their comrades from the prior expedition, tied to trees; as a deterrent. But being better prepared and supplied than their predecessors, they managed to capture several of the Maroon leaders and returned with 70 right hands.

Amsterdam was one captured and identified as a ringleader. Death by fire, burned at the stake, was punishment for rebellion. They held and tortured him somewhere in today’s Eve Leary awaiting trial, away from his comrades. The Governor, unable to elicit the exact whereabouts of the remaining free communities, tried and pronounced sentence on Amsterdam. A blacksmith’s pincer was fired red, clamped around each limb and the molten skin sheared away. According to an eyewitness, when the pincer closed around Amsterdam’s upper arm, he showed a slight wince. Then, as if recalling his oath, quickly regained his composure. So much so that when they were ready for his other arm, he presented it to facilitate his torturers. Then, he was forced to step over the bodies of his already dead comrades. He was then chained to an iron stake and the fire lit below. All of this transpired without a sound from Amsterdam. He was not allowed to testify at his trial; without opportunity or desire to invoke any hearsay rule. He was allowed to beg for mercy or reveal his comrades. He elected to deny his captors any sign of weakness. His self-imposed silence was his challenge to the authority of the tribunal. He was a convict. Worse. He was not human, only property, to his captors. He uttered no parting sound.

The writer reported on a smell of roasted human flesh that hung around the city for weeks; so offensive that many could not eat for days thereafter. Stabroek was the city’s name then. Its Georgetown now.

These brigands, as the Governor called them, were allegedly robbing plantations at night in search of provisions and tools. Things had become so bad, these men and women posed a real threat to the local economy. The Haitian Revolution was fully engaged at the time. Fear would have driven the planters to drastic action. No planter, human trafficker, would kill 70 Africans without serious consideration and weighing the loss on their balance sheet against the collapse of the entire imperial project.

The economic descendants of both groups still exist. The brigands are unable to find a place within the system to survive; a system incapable of equality and instead offers tyranny. The resulting dehumanization produces a continuing flow of bodies to the grave-yards and the prison yards.

How far have we come? We denounce testimony for no other reason than the testifier is a convict. This ‘flaw’ reflects the height of detachment from reality. Conviction of a crime immediately diminishes one’s credibility among the keepers of ethical behavior. How many films, books, real life stories, feature the importance of testimony from the convicted. All over the world convicts testify at trials. Ask the Mafia, the cartels, Edward Snowden, the Yakuza and they will tell you the danger of the testimony of someone from inside the organization. That is why the organization reserves  death as punishment for anyone that testifies from within and against it. Had Amsterdam given the location of the village, his punishment was death at the hands of his own comrades. Few law enforcement agencies would be able to scratch organized crime without the testimony of insiders and this is often the testimony of the convicted. It’s like whistleblowing among criminal organizations. And make no mistake about it; police death squads are criminal organizations. Wouldn’t Roger Khan be allowed to testify at his coming commission? It’s only a problem when they are deemed to have worked for your gang.

What about the PPP atrocities? Well? What about it? This is not an ‘either or’ situation. A Rodney Commission has nothing to do with a Roger Khan, Bacchus, or Gajraj commission. It may spring from the same abuse of power. But the promised commissions rest with the current coalition government. Ask it, what is taking so long. I hope they have the answers for the expected responses. Hearsay! A joke! Political! Circumstantial evidence! No smoking gun! Too Costly! A burden on the Taxpayers! After 36 8 years, too late! Testimony of a convict! PNC atrocities!

There is no point in addressing more of these accusations. But instead I address the leadership and our future. Any attempt to do the same old things better will end in failure. We are in a position to show the world a new kind of social organization: one without prisons; at least not designed like the ones we inherited with a ready supply of bodies. There is nothing that tells a society about itself better than the condition of the people who depend upon it for daily human needs. That includes our convicts.

This principle of doing the old things bigger and better applies to every other conceivable plan. Same-old built bigger and better, that has failed elsewhere, will result in a bigger and catastrophic failure here.

We have to answer for the fires and bombs we set on this earth. A short list of terror includes: 1921 Black Wall Street, 3000 dead, Tulsa Oklahoma; 1964 Son Chapman, 43 dead, Demerara River, British Guiana; 1985, MOVE, 11 Dead, Philadelphia PA; 1964 Tain, Courantyne, 2 dead, Berbice; 1863 Civil War Draft riots, 120 dead, New York City; 1964, Michael Forde Bookshop, 1 dead, Georgetown Guyana; 1981 New Cross Fire, 13 dead, South London; 1963, 16^th Street Baptist Church, 4 Dead, Birmingham, Alabama. Add the thousands of lynchings everywhere and Somalia, Libya, Congo, Tivoli, and South Sudan. Feel free to add more. 

Since the start of 2016 several alleged petty thieves have died at the hands of the security forces. Some quarters cheered these events. Recently, a soldier died, along with his wife and an innocent motorist in a high speed car chase while the soldier was conducting government surveillance of a civilian in peacetime. Do you think that is separate from the prison fire and state terror?

Robert Gates, the convict, testified before the WRCOI, in addition to the 30 murders he witnessed, there were two men in jail with him that were executed by the police inside the jail and because they did not follow police orders. He gave names and approximate dates. This could easily be corroborated or exposed as lies. Why has no one begun an investigation? Instead, we get the Raleigh defense. It did not save Raleigh. The Raleigh defense is only the smoke and its getting warm.

The 30 killings Robert Gates testified about are not political in the Rodney, WPA, APNU, sense. They were political like the brigands, the maroons, of the 1790s whose activities and presence posed a threat to the fake order the state claimed. Historically, summary execution is seen as a legitimate method of dealing with this threat. Despite our individual distance from the heat, no one will escape unhurt. Decide where you stand. Are you the militia, the analyst, the outlaw, or the rewarded, but enslaved?

Voltaire is credited with this, "Those who can make you believe in absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." We have seen our share.

Lets pay homage to the ones we 'killed', through our continuing silence, or those victims we know died unjustly, by fire and bomb, gun, cannon and now drone, by never forgetting, by accepting responsibility and recognizing the distance we have travelled from reality and the distance still ahead. Black Lives Matter everywhere.