Royden “Smallie” Williams died as he lived – violently. He was only 20 years old when he was accused and tried as a member of Fineman’s gang that callously committed the Lusignan Massacre in January 2008. They snuffed out the lives of eleven children, women and men while their victims were sleeping in their beds. The victims had done nothing, and were simply picked at random as Indian Guyanese PPP supporters, to send a message by gang leader “Fineman” Rawlins to the Government – whom he believed had abducted his girlfriend.
Fineman had taken over from Andrew Douglas and the other four 2002 Mash Day escapees from the Camp Street jail, and had chosen his home village as their base. In the following years, criminals and wanna-be-criminals from all over Guyana gravitated to the self-styled “African Guyanese Freedom Fighters”. Several from the Opposition political community glamorised and extolled these savage killers – who epitomised the meaning of “terrorists”. They preyed on innocent citizens to make political points against the Government.
Smallie was from the village of Uitvlugt – all the way across the Demerara River on the West Coast. No one’s pinpointed when he actually joined the gang – but he had to’ve been a teenager. His co-accused who was tried for the Lusignan massacre was just FOURTEEN. The Buxton Gang acted as a finishing school for young aspiring criminals – including many from the village. While Smallie and his accomplice were tried – the others had died in a firefight with the Joint Services in August 2008. Smallie and his co-accused were acquitted on technicalities. Because Smallie had also been convicted for the murder of a soldier in Buxton, he remained in jail, but his even more youthful accomplice was freed. One wonders what he’s doing right now.
Smallie went on to participate in the Bartica Massacre, a month after the Lusignan Massacre, wherein eight were murdered. He was also convicted for this mayhem. In 2017, by now a hardened jailbird, Smallie masterminded a breakout fire at his Lot 12 Camp St lodgings. Thirteen persons were killed in that conflagration – but Smallie was sprung. Not for long, though!! He was captured in a bus on WCB – probably on his way to Suriname.
So, imagine, with a background like that, Smallie was allowed to meet some Venezuelan woman on his own outside the prison. It was a carefully orchestrated plan to spring him once again in real Wild West fashion. Gunmen from a boat fired on the prison officers bringing back Smallie from the supposedly highest-security Mazaruni Prison. And supposedly in shackles, he swam to the boat and escaped.
The Joint Services then successfully followed General Colin Powell’s war maxim: “We’re gonna find them, cut them off and kill them.”
…of futility
Your Eyewitness feels for the leaders – especially the wanna-be-leaders! – in the PNC. But really, they shouldn’t blame themselves. The fault, dear readers, lies in the particular constellation of stars at their formation. You see…the PNC wasn’t formed organically out of the soil of Guyana – but was launched full blown on the ambitions of one man, by foreign elements with agendas of their own.
That man – Burnham – sold his soul to those foreign elements, and while they gave him enough rope to strut around like the megalomaniac he was, they knew he’d simply implode on his contradictions. They even gave him money to fund a party – but he thought he was cleverer to use only sycophants, who massaged his ego in the party that was simply a vestigial organ – like our useless appendix!!
The PNC – unlike the PPP – has no institutional memory of how a party’s actually organised and maintained. Like with everything else, Burnham only focused on words – not actions and institutions!!
…of realpolitik
Henry Kissinger – the ultimate realpolitik wonk – is 100 years old. His power- and-transactionalist-oriented foreign policy approach produced destructive outcomes. From coups installing dictators like in Chile, to murdering civilians in Cambodia, and alienating potential allies like India.
