People burn tires and
debris to protest the killing of 11 people by gunmen in Lusignan,
Guyana, Saturday, January 26, 2008.
Gunmen stormed into a coastal village Saturday and killed 11
people, including five children, in violence blamed on a gang
leader who has threatened widespread attacks. The assault sparked
angry protests over rising crime in this impoverished country.
The killings in Lusignan came hours after gunmen attacked police
headquarters in the capital, firing indiscriminately and wounding
two guards.
Police and government officials say they suspect a criminal gang
led by Rondell Rawlins is behind the violence. Rawlins accused
security forces of kidnapping his pregnant 18-year-old girlfriend
earlier this week and authorities said he threatened to carry out
attacks until she is found.
Guyana, an English-speaking South American country, has
struggled with violent crime fueled by drugs and gun trafficking,
and is known as the site of the 1978 Jonestown mass-suicide and
killings led by the American cult leader Jim Jones.
It was unclear why the gunmen chose Lusignan, a town 7 miles
east of the capital where many of the men are usually away working
to support their families.
Raj Harrylall, whose two sons and wife were among the dead, sat
in stunned silence in his bloodstained living room. He had returned
to his village from working in Trinidad only hours after the
assault on the town.
"I don't know how he's going to make out," said Rickey Gurudat,
his brother-in-law. "There's no one left in the house. Everyone got
killed."
Elsewhere in Lusignan, a town of whitewashed wooden homes,
people gathered quietly in small groups, surveying bullet-scarred
walls and kicked-in doors. Some erected tents for wakes.
In the neighboring town of Mon Repos, the slayings prompted
angry protests over the government's seeming inability to suppress
gang violence in the country. At least 300 people flooded into the
streets, burning tires, refrigerators and other debris and blocking
the main roads.
Mon Repos is usually a bustling marketplace on Saturdays, but
everything was closed as irate villagers yelled at soldiers that
began to arrive.
"It is unthinkable that gunmen will break into your house with
your family, put everyone to sit in a chair and kill them," said
50-year-old Karamchand Sukhu.
There were no reports of arrests, and President Bharrat Jagdeo
urged neighborhood watch groups to report any leads to police.
"(This) could not have been done by human beings but rather by
animals," Jagdeo said ahead of meetings with security officials and
the military.
Police offered a $150,000 reward for information that could lead
to Rawlins.
Authorities say Rawlins has been the leader of a gang associated
with armed robberies since 2002. He is suspected of involvement in
the April 2006 slaying of Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh -- a
murder that authorities said was aimed at destabilizing this former
Dutch and British colony.
On Wednesday night, suspected members of Rawlins' gang killed a
Guyanese soldier during a gunbattle in Buxton, a village 2 miles
from Lusignan.
There were just over 100 people killed last year in the nation
of about 770,000.
Authorities blame much of the crime on the growing drug trade
and gun smuggling. Drug trafficking accounts for an estimated 20
percent of Guyana's gross domestic product, according to the US
State Department.
Guyana, on the northern coast of South America, is known to many
abroad as the site of Jonestown, where American cult leader Jim
Jones exhorted his followers to drink cyanide-laced grape punch in
1978. Most adults were poisoned, some forcibly. Some were shot by
cult security guards. Hours later, Jones and 912 of his followers
were dead.
(Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2008)
