Dear Editor,
This letter is in response to one captioned ‘The AFC has failed again,’ which was published in the April 21 issue of the Guyana Chronicle newspaper. The author of that letter was Mr Edward Simon. In his letter, Mr Simon took issue with an advertisement which the AFC ran in the Trinidad Express newspaper during the just concluded Summit of the Americas.
While Mr Simon recognized that “it is everyone’s right to express their views,” he proceeded to criticize the AFC for exercising that right and characterized the advertisement as “wrangling.” Mr Simon would be well advised to heed his own observation that there are differences of opinion in “democratic countries” and that citizens, through their elected representatives, have a right to express those differences in any forum that they deem appropriate. He also described the AFC as “extremists.” What is it that Mr Simon found so ‘extreme’ about the AFC exercising the freedom of expression that he so enthusiastically defended? If extremism is simply putting a paid advertisement in a foreign national newspaper, then he should not fear extremists.
Mr Simon also claimed that AFC’s action was an embarrassment to Guyana and seemed to suggest that it would embolden customs officials in foreign countries to be disrespectful to Guyanese seeking entry to their respective countries. I would like to assure Mr Simon that the world is not unaware of the state of affairs in Guyana. One needs only access the daily newspapers via the internet to see them. In fact foreign customs officials have been rude to Guyanese immigrants well before last week’s advertisement.
What those customs officials are concerned about and rightly so, are the large numbers of Guyanese who seek entry to their countries, in search of refuge, because their living conditions in Guyana are so intolerable.
They resent the fact that many of these Guyanese compete with locals for scarce jobs and resources, and in some cases engage in criminal activity; those are the reasons for their “negative attitude,” not an advertisement run by the AFC.
As Mr Simon observed, freedom of expression, in any forum one chooses, is a fundamental tenet of democracy.
I would encourage more Guyanese to speak out as they see fit. Democracy perishes in the dark.
Yours faithfully,
Terrence Duncan
