It seems the more we know about Cotton Tree, the less we know
Dear Editor,
So, where are we with Cotton Tree? Wherever we are, I think it’s a bad place, one that reinforces the darkness in this country. As I sense things, it’s more than one of the usual unsolved mysteries that the police categorize as cold cases. It’s confirmation of the terrible cruelty of the first two murders at Cotton Tree, then a third further afield, and now a pensioner. Other than a drink-induced confession, only the louder silence warms up and extends.
It seems the more we know about Cotton Tree, the less we know. In the amount of our knowledge, we know nothing. Everyone has their favorite doubts, but all we really have are dead bodies and mutilation; and raging passions that spin from the memories of horrific acts that only grow with the passage of time.
That dropped pensioner is the latest exhibition of the results that began at Cotton Tree; while time was against us in what I once believed was a race to bring the criminals to justice. At the rate at which the murders occur, we could have an authentic small murder industry on our hands in Cotton Tree and its wider outskirts.
The president himself made late pilgrimages and promises. Still, we’re in the same place as before half a year later, which is nowhere. The thinking in some quarters is that Guyana Police is working with the hand it has. I subscribe to that, and I’m not limiting myself to just the abundance, or scarcity, of supportive evidence of the trauma. In the context of the Cotton Tree murders, my view is that the police are in the same place as a local EPA.
The police might be thinking to move more powerfully with what it has, and get more outside help, and end issues. But like the EPA, it’s a creature of circumstances, and possibly of the convenience of leadership, group loyalty, and carefully calibrated protection. For emphasis, and not to be mistaken, I boldly assert that politics has interfered and influenced.
Editor, when political figures go silent, when leaders try to shelter a defensive distance, when those same leaders move around something as sensitive and stormy as Cotton Tree, then subtitles, or interpretations, conclusions and Argentina recommendations.
In the broader fabric of grand political conspiracies and plotlines, four murders serve only as casualties of our ongoing undeclared political wars, the simple arithmetic of leadership neglect, fragile continuity. Murderous violence is now so widespread, and political frauds so normal, that we have become jaded and listless. I find a connection between the two on Cotton Tree; it is now bordering on the waste ground of inconvenient reminders and nuisances. I began to hope last year that the nation will get somewhere fairly fast and compact on Cotton Tree. That was then, this is now.
Truly,
Lall GHK