Dear Editor,
I thought I was alone in thinking that Clement Rohee, the Minister of Home Affairs, is living on another planet, when he said recently that people in Guyana were “more interested in the barrels that were coming from abroad than torture,” speaking of two Guyanese, reportedly in the hands of the security forces .
Robin Williams’s letter, captioned “Mr Rohee’s statement on what he perceived to be citizens’ priorities was sad” (08.01.03) will certainly get the overwhelming support of a large section of Guyanese nationally and internationally.
Those of us who have given nearly everything for the cause of democracy and freedom in Guyana are horrified that a PPP Minister can make such a statement in such a public manner, without any public rebuke from the President of the Republic or the General Secretary of the PPP, Donald Ramotar.
The recently reported misuse of a gun by Minister Kellawan Lall and now the recent outrageous statement by another senior minister about the alleged torture of two men must be of grave concern to all right-thinking Guyanese, wherever they live.
Minister Lall’s incident and Rohee’s recent comments on torture must be seen as a deep crisis within the governing PPP and the government as a whole. The fact that there has been no public enquiry into the incident of an alleged torture of our countrymen shows a serious deterioration of our democracy. This is frightening to say, the least.
There can be no excuse for torturing people in Guyana and unless an impartial investigation is carried out immediately and the relevant punishment is meted out against those who may have carried out such dastardly acts – if there is any evidence of such claims – we are moving down a very slippery slope, with no return.
One must recall the repressive nature of the Burnham dictatorship and how it all began. Not enough people were prepared to take a stand. People were prepared to sell themselves to that regime or to voluntarily join, with the hope of changing things from the inside. One such person was Vincent Teekah, who became Education Minister and was later mysteriously killed, without any trace of the killer/s.
Let us raise our voices and use every avenue to defend our young democracy with all our strength that we can muster, before it is too late. We thank this newspaper as being one avenue of exposure of the wrong-doings. Long live our democratic gains, let strive to protect it !
Yours faithfully,
Lawrence Persaud
