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Probing
recent savage violence in Guyana - The vortex of death
Posted February 27, 2008
By Freddie Kissoon (Kaieteur News)
(Georgetown, Guyana) Nothing that has happened in
this country, in the past and at the present time, in the
exercise of power, could justify the Lusignan Holocaust and
the Bartica massacre. Nothing and no one could justify
gunmen looking at sleeping children and shooting them dead
in their beds. We have arrived at a stage of social and
political breakdown in Guyana that is unparalleled in the
modern West Indies.|
What happened at Lusignan and Bartica do not come within the
same category of the Muslimeen seizure of the Trinidad
Parliament. There was no descent into unspeakable violence
in the Trinidad incident. The only cluster of events one can
think in this context is right here in Guyana; the sixties.
I am typing this essay on the stroke of 18.00 hours on
Tuesday. I wanted to delay the submission of my column so I
could take a long intermission of reflection on the
contents. I am an opinion-maker. I know from the deep
recesses of my heart that there are minds that can be
influenced by what is written in this corner of Kaieteur
News.
I have penned a particular observation several times on this
page. It goes like this – a commentator walks a very thin
line in the fragile polity that Guyana is. You are
sandwiched between the extreme sensitivity of avoiding
advocacy and assessing the cruel reality in your country.
How does one do that successfully?
If you say that you will be cautious and not say anything to
avoid widening the schism, then would you be hiding
objective reality from those to whom you have a
responsibility to educate? Racism is one such minefield. All
commentators must avoid racial incitement. You cannot
conjure up in your mind fictions of racial nastiness and
translate it into speeches. That is wrong. This entire
country and the Diaspora know that I was the first person to
confront the subjectivities in Kean Gibson’s little booklet,
“The cycle of racial oppression in Guyana.”
As a trained historian and social scientist, I do not
believe that in the past there existed and exists today a
supremacist mind in the PPP leadership driven by the Hindu
caste system to annihilate African Guyanese. This was a
phantasmagoria in the mind of Dr. Gibson. There is no racist
mind in the PNC and PPP leaderships that is based on
religious and cultural cultism.
As an academic that does research on Guyanese political
past, there is no evidence to substantiate such a theory.
But I know there are racist mentalities in both parties.
Having said all of that, what does the researcher do when
he/she is confronted with the actual practice of racism? Not
being a member of government, not being a politician, what
does the academic do? Shall you not write on the existence
of racism in your country because it is a sensitive subject?
This has been a long introduction to the main thesis on this
essay – how does one approach reality in Guyana. By one, I
mean the intellectual, the analyst. How do I put into
perspective the bestial levels of violence that seems to be
emanating from a certain hidden section of the Guyanese
people? What do I say when people ask me to do just that?
And believe me since the Lusignan Holocaust and now the
Bartica massacre, I have had to face the agony of the
persistence of curiosity.
People come up and insist that I tell them what is going on;
as if I know what is going on. On February 28, I will offer
a background to why we have come to this drowning pool in a
UG seminar entitled; “Exodus and Authoritarianism: The
post-1992 degenerate state in Guyana.” UG seminars are open
to the public so anyone can walk off the road, come in to
the presentation and ask questions.
In that seminar, the flow will be more academic. The purpose
of this page in the Kaieteur News is to shape intellectual
insights into a more readable form so that they can reach
the average citizens. Ravi Dev once referred to me as a
“public intellectual,” a term I willingly accept because I
think I serve a more useful function in life in my country
by being a public intellectual than your quintessential
university academic.
Those who have read my columns on Buxton from 2002 onwards
(must have been about fifteen of them) would know that I
arrived at the conclusion that there existed in Buxton, an
anti-government movement that was (and is) prepared to
violently confront the PPP Government. My opinion then and
throughout all my writings on Buxton was that the thing went
astray.
We come now to Lusignan and Bartica. There is no need to
repeat the contents of yesterday’s column. For those who
didn’t read it, my argument was to invite readers to
research the syndrome of violence looking at all the
dimensions of the modus operandi of the gunmen.
To me, the evidence points to insurgents rather than
criminals bent on robbing people. That these insurgents are
viciously violent and extremely brutal cannot be denied. But
if you operate in life using your emotions only, then, you
are going to go on the rooftop and denounce them as
criminals. You are going to sermonize the security forces to
catch them and punish them because they are criminals.
When you finish your emotional trip, then on using your
mind, you will come to the realization of Oliver Hinckson,
Father Malcolm Rodrigues and Eusi Kwayana that something is
wrong. These men may not be just your run-of-the mill
bandits. They may not be bandits at all. Then you will ask
that if they are not criminals then what do they want. Of
course the question has to be asked; why are they so cruel?
Again, reality has to be faced.
You may hate these men but if you are going to come to grips
with what is going on in Guyana then, emotions have no
place. Yes they are cruel but could the cruelty be
understood by the probing mind. Do the analysts have an
explanation for the savagery? So we have to discuss two
factors – the psychotic nature of the violence and what they
want. Briefly this is how I see the reality in Guyana. The
horrible level of violence the gunmen perpetrate is their
way of showing those whose attention they want that they are
hell-bent on getting their agenda discussed. They feel the
crueler they are the more serious they will be taken.
My studies of these kinds of situations tell me that
insurgency movements thrive on insane violence because it is
a strategy for being recognized thus the eventual movement
to the negotiating table.
In relation to what they desire, I believe this is a
movement whose intellectual authors think that the PPP
Government is not a good and fair government and they are
not prepared to accept it. They want to arrange a new
political system in Guyana where the PPP will not be totally
in charge of the affairs of Guyana.
My UG seminar will elongate on all these dimensions of the
vortex of death that now faces this nation.
