Bert Wilkin­son

Heav­i­ly-armed Guyanese ri­ot po­lice shot dead three pro­test­ers on Wednes­day and wound­ed about 20 oth­ers af­ter demon­stra­tions against ris­ing elec­tric­i­ty costs. Pro­test­ers al­so burned sev­er­al build­ings, in­clud­ing the of­fice of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Pro­gres­sive Par­ty, in the re­mote jun­gle town of Lin­den. Guyana's Pres­i­dent Don­ald Ramo­tar says he re­grets the deaths and in­juries caused by the shoot­ings and that au­thor­i­ties will open an in­ves­ti­ga­tion once calm is re­stored to the area. Po­lice are ac­cused of fir­ing bul­lets and tear gas at pro­test­ers, who hurled bot­tles and rocks and blocked the on­ly riv­er bridge con­nect­ing Lin­den-the coun­try's sec­ond largest town-to Brazil.

Ri­ot po­lice ap­par­ent­ly lost pa­tience as night fell on Wednes­day and the bridge re­mained close to traf­fic. They opened fire on the demon­stra­tors-some shot in the back as they ran-killing three, and in­jur­ing about 20, ten of whom re­main hos­pi­talised. Po­lice say they were pelt­ed with bot­tles, stones and oth­er mis­siles, charges de­nied by Op­po­si­tion leader David Granger of A Part­ner­ship for Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU) and oth­ers.

Granger, a for­mer army com­man­der, said yes­ter­day that Guyana's po­lice com­man­der should be im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed. The con­fronta­tion be­tween the po­lice and pro­test­ers had been build­ing up for months, ever since Granger and a team from the main op­po­si­tion par­ty had dis­cussed the is­sue of rais­ing elec­tric­i­ty rates for Lin­den, a de­pressed baux­ite town 65 miles south­west of George­town. Most of the 30,000 peo­ple who live in the town, Guyanese of African ori­gin in the main, feel that the In­do-led ad­min­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Ramo­tar de­lib­er­ate­ly raised the rates be­cause Lin­den­ers had vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly for Granger's par­ty. They felt the in­creas­es were based on vin­dic­tive­ness and spite. But the gov­ern­ment ar­gued that all the au­thor­i­ties want­ed to do was to bring rates in Lin­den on par with those in George­town and oth­er coastal ar­eas and so a stand-off en­sued. This week, Lin­den­ers took to the streets to protest the in­creas­es and ag­i­tate against a slew of so­cial ills, in­clud­ing dust pol­lu­tion from the baux­ite plant run by Chi­na's Boasi Min­er­als, high un­em­ploy­ment and the few op­por­tu­ni­ties for youths in the area.

They blocked the lone bridge con­nect­ing the city with the 350-mile road that leads to most of the gold, di­a­mond and tim­ber pro­duc­ing ar­eas as well as the way through the jun­gle to Brazil, in ad­di­tion to ef­fec­tive­ly clos­ing down the town as sym­pa­thet­ic em­ploy­ers had even closed some stores and had been ob­serv­ing the protests on the side­lines. An­gered by the shoot­ing, which Granger said came with­out warn­ing and was un­pro­voked, pro­test­ers burned build­ings-most sig­nif­i­cant­ly the town of­fice of the gov­ern­ing PPP-and vowed to strike back. The gov­ern­ment im­me­di­ate­ly blamed the AP­NU and the Al­liance For Change (AFC) for stir­ring up trou­ble and leav­ing demon­stra­tors to face fire from po­lice, say­ing it "sin­cere­ly re­grets the loss of life and in­juries as events took an un­for­tu­nate turn for the worse this evening in Lin­den. The gov­ern­ment re­it­er­ates that the grad­ual in­crease in tar­iffs for Lin­den did not war­rant such vi­o­lent be­hav­iour, es­pe­cial­ly when the rest of Guyana is pay­ing the full rates," a state­ment said.