“‘The knock on the door at night’ is not within our regional culture; still less are intimations of ‘ethnic cleansing’”

Senior regional integrationist, Sir Shridath Ramphal says that it is sad that the Caribbean is experiencing a period  when both policies and practices are deepening divisions and he cautioned that “we forget our oneness at our peril.”

In an apparent reference to the targeting of illegal CARICOM nationals in Barbados, some of whom have been rounded up in early morning raids, the Guyanese-born former Commonwealth secretary general said, “It is always a sadness when, however propelled, our societies are caught in a downward spiral of separateness with fellow West Indians cast as ‘outsiders’”.

Sir Shridath, in an address at the inauguration of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers in Port-of-Spain on Thursday, referred to these times in the words of Barbadian researcher Annalee Davis who has described them as becoming “locked into nationalist crevices. . . and exclusivist cultural legitimacy”.

“We are at such a time, and both policies and practices are deepening Caribbean divides,” Sir Shridath asserted.

He maintained that ‘The knock on the door at night’ is not within our regional culture; still less are intimations of ‘ethnic cleansing’”.

Moreover, Sir Shridath stated, “No Caribbean leader would countenance such departures from our norms and values; but all must not only believe, but also act as if they believe, that we forget our oneness at our peril; whether the ‘otherness’ that displaces it is an accidental place of regional birth, or otherness of any kind.”

And explaining his use of the term ‘accidental’, he observed that “in the Caribbean the age-old process of trans-migration has made us all family.”

Regional togetherness

He also noted that the great Barbadian regionalist and former  prime minister, Errol Barrow, had reminded  twenty-three years ago that: “If we have sometimes failed to comprehend the essence of the regional integration movement, the truth is that thousands of ordinary Caribbean people do in fact live that reality every day. . . . we are a family . . . and this fact of regional togetherness is lived every day by ordinary West Indian men and women in their comings and goings.”

Sir Shridath agreed that indeed it was and for a very long time and recalled that his great-great grandfather on his  mother’s side had come to Guyana from Barbados looking for land and settlement, and found them . . . “and so it has been up and down the chain of island societies that free movement fused into one: freedom curbed ironically with the arrival of our separate ‘national’ freedoms.”

However, he noted, the roots of those family trees are now spread out in the sub-soil of the Caribbean and while social antipathy and divisiveness deny them, DNA’s defy even constitutions.

Citing a warning that “CARICOM is at risk”, he agreed that it is so and added that few are blameless.

Our oneness

“The basic premise of our regional lives is that West Indians are one people; and like all commingled people are of many varieties.

In our case, the varieties have enriched the composite oneness, yielding now a characteristic mosaic identity of which we all tend to be proud and often boast,” the senior regional integrationist observed.

He stated further that, “Political leaders, in particular, have to be less casual about CARICOM, less minimalist in their ambition for it, less negative in their vision of it. Its foundations have been built on our oneness; not on the geography of a dividing sea.”

According to Sir Shridath, the “Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas is not just embellished parchment; it is the logic of that oneness in a world which threatens our separate survival. And the revised treaty is not all; there are international conventions to which all CARICOM member states are parties that are relevant to our rights and obligations to each other as human beings, much less family.”

He also contended that the Caribbean Community is now a  regional mansion within a global home. “We have to make it more secure and habitable,” he urged, “through reaching goals like the CSME (or even the CSM), and reaching them together.”

Meanwhile, Sir Shridath noted that next month is the 20th Anniversary of the Grand Anse Resolution on Preparing the Peoples of the West Indies for the Twenty-first Century, the Resolution that established the West Indian Commission.   He observed that nearing the end of the new century’s first decade, “we are still ‘preparing’.”

In that light, Sir Shridath said no wonder ‘CARICOM is at risk’ since “in the era of globalization, we retrogress if we simply mark time while the world moves ahead.”

Referring to the upcoming meeting of CARICOM’s political directorate in Georgetown next week at their XXXth Summit, Sir Shridath called on the leaders to “demonstrate credibly that they still believe in Caribbean integration, that they care about securing it against risk, and that they are serious in their commitment to the objectives of the Treaty of Chaguaramas.”

Sir Shridath also cautioned that, “The siren song of separatism lures us to self-destruction,  as it once did with the federal nation we were about to be 47 years ago,” adding that the West Indies Federation did not founder on technical rocks but foundered on political ones.

He pointed out that, “We have now re-built painstakingly over nearly half a century and are again ‘about to be’,  this time an economic community. And again the siren sings seductive songs of separatism.”

“In our collective self-interest, resistance of that enticement has become a major challenge of our time; and it is from our political directorates that the will to resist must mainly come,” Sir Shridath concluded.

Meanwhile, several Caribbean media reports have referred to the comments made by St. Lucian Prime Minister Stephenson King who was quoted as saying that “he wants his fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders to take urgent action to facilitate the free movement of people throughout the region.”

In the meantime, St. Vincent Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves had blasted Barbadian authorities for the treatment that some of his nationals had received in Bridgetown, adding that seemingly across CARICOM, some nationalities — including those from his country, Guyana and Jamaica — have been targeted unfairly.

According to his St Lucian counterpart, Gonsalves had a basis for observing that such actions go against the spirit of CARICOM’s regional integration process.

And in a recent interview with this newspaper, University of Guyana Professor Clive Thomas said he felt that the David Thompson administration’s targeting of CARICOM nationals in its crackdown on illegal immigrants was an act of profiling. He said he felt the action needed to be met with the strongest protest.

Professor Thomas voiced his disapproval particularly over reports that the homes of illegal migrants are being raided, calling it “degrading and discriminatory.” He said he also felt that it violates the spirit of the CSME [CARICOM Single Market and Economy].

“CARICOM has worked to promote an agreement aimed at creating a single economic space and so this is very offensive to CARICOM. We have a responsibility to speak out. We cannot allow the Barbados government to get away with this. We cannot condone such action, it is degrading, dehumanising, indiscriminate and inhumane,” he insisted.

Thomas also questioned why it was that only CARICOM nationals were being targeted when nationals from other countries also overstayed their welcome in Barbados. “This is profiling and this is very offensive,” he argued.

Since the unveiling of the new Barbadian policy on undocumented CARICOM  citizens which was styled as an “amnesty”, there have been frequent reports that Barbadian immigration workers and security forces have been rounding up illegals in the most uncivilized manner and depositing them at the Grantley Adams Airport for immediate return to this country.