The leader of the Al­liance for Change (AFC), Nigel Hugh­es, said Tues­day while the pathol­o­gists’ pre­lim­i­nary find­ings in the death of 11-year-old Adri­ana Younge in­di­cate that her cause of death was drown­ing, “it is clear that many ques­tions re­main unan­swered”.

In a state­ment, Hugh­es, an at­tor­ney, said while the re­port “pro­vides an im­por­tant first step in un­der­stand­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her trag­ic pass­ing” the par­ty is re­it­er­at­ing “the ur­gent need for a full, thor­ough, and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine how and why Adri­an­na drowned”.

The body of the 11-year-old was found in the pool of the Dou­ble Day Ho­tel at Tuschen last Thurs­day and her fa­ther, Sub­rayn Younge, has since plead­ed with the pop­u­la­tion for peace and an end to vi­o­lence in wake of wide­spread fiery protests that es­ca­lat­ed on Mon­day.

In a so­cial me­dia post, Younge, said the fam­i­ly was told that his daugh­ter died by drown­ing, but that oth­er tests will be done on sam­ples tak­en from her lungs. He said his daugh­ter was not a vi­o­lent per­son and would not have ap­proved of the acts of vi­o­lence tak­ing place as part of protests in her name.

In his state­ment, Hugh­es said that the AFC is al­so “strong­ly” con­demn­ing the acts of vi­o­lence, the de­struc­tion of prop­er­ty, the loot­ing, and the block­ing of pub­lic roads that have fol­lowed the an­nounce­ment of these find­ings.

“These ac­tions un­der­mine the cause of jus­tice and do not hon­or Adri­ana’s mem­o­ry. Vi­o­lence, law­less­ness, and dis­or­der must nev­er be the re­sponse to grief or out­rage. Not in Adri­ana Younge’s name.

“Her life, her dig­ni­ty, and her lega­cy de­mand bet­ter — from all of us. We call on all cit­i­zens to act peace­ful­ly and law­ful­ly as we con­tin­ue to seek the full truth about her death. Jus­tice must be pur­sued with re­solve, but al­ways with re­spect for the rule of law and the rights of all.

We stand firm­ly com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that Adri­ana’s pass­ing is nei­ther for­got­ten nor mis­used — and that true ac­count­abil­i­ty is achieved,” Hugh­es added.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said his ad­min­is­tra­tion has been told to lim­it ac­cess to cer­tain me­dia con­tent on the In­ter­net, but he was care­ful not to spec­i­fy the types of sites he was re­fer­ring to.

“One in­ter­na­tion­al spe­cial­ist told me it’s maybe a good time al­so to re­view the open­ness... When I say open­ness, not the free­dom of me­dia, but the open­ness of ac­cess to me­dia on these sites and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, al­so, that is en­shrined to every­one,” he told a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day night to an­nounce the find­ings of the au­top­sy on Younge.

Ali said that “very deep-seat­ed is­sues” such as re­strict­ing ac­cess to cer­tain sites would be part of a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion for Guyanese, telling re­porters “you know if some­one goes there and por­trays a cer­tain re­al­i­ty, then that in­flu­ences so we have to, as a coun­try, be ma­ture enough to recog­nise all of these is­sues”.

Over the past few days, peo­ple have tak­en to so­cial me­dia call­ing for de­struc­tion of prop­er­ty and the killing of top gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Po­lice have since is­sued want­ed bul­letins for many of them.

Many of those on the bul­letin were cap­tured on CCTV cam­eras set­ting fire on var­i­ous streets dur­ing Mon­day night protests, while oth­ers were fin­gered in rob­beries and loot­ings and oth­ers are want­ed over state­ments made on so­cial me­dia, en­cour­ag­ing per­sons to protest by set­ting the streets alight. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)