Time has come to empty Death Row

Fri, Oct 7. 2011

Editor: The picture of jubilation and the expression of glee on the face of the alleged ‘’killer of Campden Park’’ which was published in the searchlight Midweek Newspaper of September 20th prompted me to dive into my archives and retrieve therefrom a song I composed and sang some fifteen year ago, “Hang Them”.{{more}}

At the age of almost seventy years old, and as one who grew up in the age of the hangman, I firmly believe that the thought of ‘the noose round yuh neck’ was a sufficient deterrent in preventing many more murders from occurring in SVG over the past fifty or more years.

AS a kid going to school in the fifties and sixties (my main primary school was the Richmond Hill Government school, before I entered the Boys Grammar school), we kids would sometimes pass by the courthouse gate opposite the Lyric cinema to look at the Breadfruit tree under which supposedly lay the remains of the only female convict ever to be hanged in SVG. We called her Mary Gray. Whether that was her correct name I do not know. What I do know is that as kids, none of us wanted to be buried on any prison compound, under any breadfruit tree.

The time has come for Vincentians to unite in our determination, to dig out and destroy those among us, who with gay abandon, and wanton disregard for the law, and total disrespect for humankind would murder innocent people, and then express sheer and utter jubilation at their misdeeds, as seen on the face of that photograph of that alleged killer from Campden Park.

The time has come for peace loving Vincentians to say: “No more! No more”. We will not sit idly by and allow killers to wantonly murder us. We say no more! The time has come when we must empty Death Row and continue to take preventive measures for our protection. The Government must now take the lead to rid our homeland of these beasts and vagabonds.

Bung Sukharno