Letter was unfairly edited
Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter captioned “Hammie has hurt my feelings” (22.11.2002) sent by myself on behalf of my husband.

However, in the process of editing the letter you deleted a section of a paragraph that was integral to the point he was making. This act is, of course, within your rights as a newspaper but in this particular instance resulted in a disjointed statement which when apprised seems to be a pointless utterance.

This paricular piece of editing should have been more thoroughly thought out and maybe instead of complete deletion, some substitution could have been made.
Instead of reading, “Either of our two champs could have been assassinated by the Black Clothes police (God forbid) who are supported in their murderous deeds by the PPP/C, certain corrupt businessmen and Hammie himself”, the sentence was abruptly cut off at police.

Yours faithfully,
Maria Benschop

Editor’s note:
The words were deleted because they constitute an unproven and offensive allegation.

The extra judicial killings of primarily young African men, but also members of the WPA, started long before this government came to power in 1992 and was part of the process of the breakdown and politicisation of the traditional police force.

The Guyana Human Rights Association and other groups had for years been calling for the resumption of inquests and the end of these abuses.

This government inherited a death squad. The most that can be said is that they did not take firm or indeed any action to stop this abuse.

In any event, the point that young black men were at risk was made by the words that followed namely “Vicious Vivian was a vendor like his brother Sean Harris who was beaten by Hammie’s City Police and locked up while selling t-shirts and shorts on Regent Street”.