Guns for Guyana reporters

According to the Guyana police, shortly before midnight a gang of heavily armed masked gunmen, who were also armed with cutlasses, stormed the Kaieteur News Press room in the Eccles district and shot security guard Julius De Grace before proceeding to kill four employees and leaving a fifth in critical condition.

Up to press time, Lall said he was told by doctors that the injured Shazeem Mohammed may not make it. The dead press men have been identified as Chetram Persaud, 46; Eion Wegman, 47; Richard Steward, 24 and Mark Mikoo.

The men were made to lie on the ground and were shot in the head execution-style, with their hands outstretched.

Media and police reports point to another gang of gunmen carrying out a simultaneous attack in violence-ridden Buxton, East Bank Demerara and Bagotstown areas, where three other people were killed, including shop owner Wordsworth Grey, bringing the number of deaths to eight on Tuesday.

The attack on the Kaieteur News comes 19 days before Guyana goes to the polls on August 28, but Lall said he did not think the killing was in any way related to the country’s general elections.

“I really don’t know the motive, what I do know, is that it was a devastating blow to all of us. I don’t really think elections is a factor, we are fair in our reporting,” he told Newsday. “We are very bold in whatever we do, but we are friends with everybody,” he added.

He warned that the attack will not stop him from bringing out his newspaper adding that four years ago, a grenade was thrown in the printery which went up in flames, during the crime/kidnapping spree of 2002.

Asked how this would affect operations at Kaieteur, Lall said, “I am willing to do whatever it takes, nothing stops me from bringing out a daily newspaper in this country. My journalists have taken the lead over the past two years and I am going to continue to carry out the newspaper.”

While he was thankful his printery was not destroyed, Lall said when he saw his employees lying on the ground, he was devastated.

“They killed them like animals...it was the most gruesome thing any human being could think about,” he added.

The publisher was among the first to arrive at the scene, saying that he was just a minute away from the printery when he heard shots being fired and he quickly alerted his reporters to get the story. A short while later, however, he was told his printery was under attack and that one of the guards had been shot. “Within a minute I was there and I saw them all lined up and executed.”

“One of the press men ran out of the building and said ‘chief, they killed out the pressmen’,” Lall said. Kaieteur News has been in operation for 12 years, employs 65 people and has a daily circulation of 22,000.

Lall, a father of one, said he could think of no motive for the attack and dismissed any involvement in any illegal activities saying “my life is very open.” He said he started from nothing and developed his newspaper from a weekly to a daily. “Do you think if I were involved in anything immoral or illegal, I would still be in the business,?” he asked. He also publishes a weekly edition of the Kaieteur News in New York and his wife, he said, operates a shoe store in Georgetown and another in New York.

He is convinced that Tuesday night’s killing was a message to the media. “I think it was an attack on the free press,” he said.

Editor-in-chief of the Stabroek News Anand Persaud told Newsday yesterday that the gruesome killings were the latest in a series of violent acts being carried out by gangs of 15 to 20 men who seem to have very strong paramilitary backgrounds. Gun from Page 3A

He said; “the security forces have been unable to come with any motives for these acts of violence which have escalated tremendously over the last few years.”

Persaud said that since 2001, Guyana has been in a state of perpetual violence and in the last eight months, there have been three such attacks, including the assassination of Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh.

“There is speculation that the violence is linked to drugs but the fact is no one has been held by the police in any of these attacks and even though they will find a gun that is ballistically linked to one of the gangs, no arrests have been made,” Persaud said.

According to Persaud, the attacks are particularly worrying with elections in the air adding that while Guyana has been accustomed to post electoral problems, “we are now having pre-electoral problems.”

But even more worrying , he said, is that gunmen who carry out their acts in such an “audacious manner” will melt into the general population and nobody will ever find out who they are.

Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo was in a meeting up to late yesterday and could not be reached for comment while acting Police Commissioner Henry Green was also said to be in a meeting.