Guyana has been plagued by a recent frightening upsurge in the number of horrendous murders, among which some stand out, only for their senselessness and ignorance (such as the killing of a female mental patient who wandered into an East Coast village and was allegedly mistaken for an old higue) or for their viciousness and callous repetition (such as the series of murders of women by their partners).

There have been strident calls for Guyanese society to take serious stock of the situation and for those in authority to provide better protection for the defenseless victims of such attacks.

As is always the case when societies begin to be gripped with fear that violence unchecked will spiral out of control and affect even wider sectors and groups, there have also been calls for the implementation of more severe punishments for those found guilty of these shocking crimes, including renewed calls for the implementation of the death penalty as a deterrent to potential murderers.

Fear that violent crime will consume more and more innocents in Guyana is a powerful force for pressuring authorities to take swift and drastic action to control the spate of lawlessness.

It has been pointed out that the death penalty has not been applied in Guyana since 1995, and that Amnesty International in its just released report on Human Rights worldwide notes that at the beginning of 2007 there were a total of just 23 persons on death row in Guyana. 

That figure, however, has risen by 6 in the first few months of 2007 with the sentencing to death of persons found guilty of particularly shocking murders, mainly men who have killed their wives, one case most recently in which the defendant killed his wife by stabbing her 11 times.

Guyana is far from the top of the diminishing list of countries still sentencing people to death. Amnesty International reports that last year worldwide there were 24,000 people on death row, 3, 861 people sentenced to death during the year and at least 1591 prisoners were executed.

The countries with the highest numbers of executions last year were in order, China 1010, Iran 177, Pakistan 82, Iraq 65 and the USA 53. Even given the fact that the population of China is nearly a quarter of the world’s, the fact is that more than half of the world’s executions take place in China. The group of countries that make up the top executioners certainly offer food for reflection.

The strongest argument for the continued implementation of the death penalty is that it is an important deterrent to future murders. Amnesty notes that far from contributing to a reduction in unlawful killings, the imposition of the death penalty in Iraq (which include that of former President Saddam Husain) has been accompanied by the very opposite, a massive increase in revenge killings and assassinations.

Amnesty in its introduction to this year’s report notes that fear can be a positive imperative for change, as in the case of the environment, where alarm about global warming is forcing politicians belatedly into action. But it also warns, “Fear can also be dangerous and divisive when it breeds intolerance, threatens diversity and justifies the erosion of human rights.”

The international Human rights organisation warned that “Today far too many leaders are trampling freedom and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears: fear of being swamped by migrants; fear of  “the other” and of losing one’s identity; fear of being blown up by terrorists; fear of “rogue states” with weapons of mass destruction.”

The politics of fear are fuelling a downward spiral of human rights abuses in which no right is sacrosanct and no person safe,” Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan said in the forward to the Report.

Amnesty notes that fear thrives on myopic and cowardly leadership. There are indeed many real causes of fear, but the approach being taken by many world leaders is short-sighted, promulgating policies and strategies that erode the rule of law and human rights, increase inequalities, feed racism and xenophobia, divide and damage communities, and sow the seeds of violence and more conflict.

“Although the rich are getting richer every day, they do not necessarily feel any safer.  Rising crime and gun violence are a source of constant fear, leading many governments to adopt policies that are purportedly tough on crime but in reality criminalise the poor, exposing them to the double jeopardy of gang violence and brutal policing.”

Even higher levels of criminal and police violence in Sao Paulo and the presence of the army on the streets of Rio de Janeiro have demonstrated the failure of Brazil’s public security policies.

Amnesty International concludes that “Providing security to one group of people at the expense of the rights of another does not work. Experience shows that public security is best strengthened through a comprehensive approach that combines better policing alongside provision of basis services such as health, education and shelter to the poor communities; so that they feel they too have a stake in a secure and stable society. At the end of the day promoting economic and social rights for all is the best approach to addressing the fears of the rich as well as the poor.”

The message clearly applies to Guyana and in particular to the issue of murder of women by their spouses and partners. Murder is only the final step in a whole process of domestic violence, verbal and physical abuse, macho mentality, economic dependence, educational backwardness, social (and even religious) tolerance and sanction of domestic abuse, and community silence and complicity with that deterioration spiral of abuse.

For every victim of domestic murder, there are dozens of family and community assertions that “I knew it has been going on and it was just a matter of time before he killed her but it was none of my business”.

Unless every family, every “concerned citizen, every church-goer and regular Sunday Masser, every faith community, every teacher and every preacher is prepared to accept in fact that they are “their sister’s keeper”, and that by  example first, followed by action, they are committed to playing their part in preventing, advising, warning, teaching, reporting, denouncing every form of physical domestic violence, the statistics of domestic abuse will continue to rise.

Encouraging the authorities to execute wife murderers, while doing nothing to prevent the existing abuse to which all are witnesses, is but a transparent and self serving attempt to “pass the buck”.
- Catholic Standard