Dear Editor,
Albeit from a layman’s point of view, I completely agree with the opinions expressed by Khushi Kumar in his letter captioned, “In the context did these words really constitute a threat to the President” (08.04.18). I certainly am not taking the position that it is ok for persons to make threats against the head of state, or for that matter any public figure.
When we examine some of the statements and analogies being put forth to justify what has to be an unprecedented penalty on a media company in a democratic nation, we can understand why it is so difficult for there to be light at the end of our tunnel of division. Let me provide an example, drawing from information presented in Kumar’s letter. Two lawyers and a minister, in their zeal to defend the penalty against Sharma, are claiming that the US would not tolerate those words. Well they certainly won’t. But they would go after the person making them. Those words would be rebroadcast over and over as part of the news cycle in the US. That is what reporters do. In Guyana we show the mutilated images of children and adults shot down in living color on television and in print as a routine presentation of news events. This brouhaha that has arisen from an assertion by a very stupid or disturbed elderly citizen has all the ingredients of the story about three foolish people, a maiden and her parents, who gathered together crying over the possibility of a mallet falling off a ledge over the door and injuring or killing her betrothed.
The double standard that allows one political segment of this population and media to say and make the most outlandish claims, while vilifying and penalizing others, is most distressing. After Lusignan, the kill word as a law enforcement tool and methodology was being thrown around with scant regard for propriety by many in the Government, or associated with the party in Government, even though there is no section of our laws and constitution that advocates killing as a means of solving or dealing with crime. In every proviso that qualifies that resort, it is cautioned that all other reasonable means have to be exhausted before lethal force should be employed. Many who had loudly criticized the President of the United States of America for adopting language contrary to that ethic after the horror of 911, had no reservations doing exactly that which they found to be abhorrent then. Go figure.
People were also, on certain television stations, indirectly pointing fingers of suspicion at public figures and others without a scintilla of evidence to support those claims. At a time when rage and anguish over the dastardly attacks in Lusignan inundated the society, the impropriety of indirectly creating a threatening climate or environment for those constantly being linked to that crime seems eons distant from the ken of many in apparent apoplectic shock over the threats of today. Would it be unreasonable to suggest that this threatening climate had something to do with the assassination of Marcyn King, a mother, a hard worker, whose only crime was being in a country where blood ties to a suspected mass murderer were lethal?
The hot and cold infatuation with the letter of the law that has become a standard pattern for many opinion leaders in our society, has no equivalent in any part of the civilized world of today. If the top indulges in this, pray tell, what are the expectations for the bottom? George Orwell’s revolutionary pigs believed walking “upright” on two legs and sleeping on beds were wrong behaviors for animals, that is, until they drove off the farmer and took his place. If one has memory, or the time to go back and check the archives of our history, they will discover patterns between then and now that are eerily reminiscent of the point Orwell was seeking to drive home.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
