Well-known letter writer and teacher Leon J. Suseran, who has been critical of the government and the Berbice regional administration in his recent letters to the press, fears that he may be victimised because of his views.
“I want to make it public that I am being threatened because of my public comments,” Suseran told Stabroek News yesterday even as he vowed not to be silenced by anyone and to continue to expose the ills as he sees them.
Suseran, is a teacher by profession and has been a regular letter writer to the daily newspapers. While many of his letters have praised the government and the PPP, in recent times some of them have been very critical of the administration and the region. He said he received a call at around 7:30 pm on Old Year’s Night from a female who warned him he was going to be victimised for “speaking out.”
The call came on the heels of Suseran’s recent letter in which he complained about Christmas parties in Berbice taking on a communist agenda as the children had to repeat how much they loved President Bharrat Jagdeo. The parties were called President Jagdeo’s parties even though he was at none of them and the children were told that the “president was outside making more money for the country.”
According to Suseran, when he answered the phone the female enquired whether he was the same person who teaches at the Vryman’s Erven Secondary School and when he responded in the affirmative she told him that “they had a meeting…” where he was discussed and a plan was hatched to victimise him. He said the female, whom he felt was merely warning him, informed that he was going to be transferred from the school and sent to Region Five because he has been “speaking out.”
Suseran said he has been teaching at the said school since 2001 when he started his career and he teaches both English A and B to CSEC students.
“The school is understaffed and if there are any attempts to remove me then I would appeal because it does not make any sense to move me from a school that needs teachers and send me to a region where I am going to be very uncomfortable,” Suseran said. He said he was also told that his record was also examined to “see if there were any lapses but when none was found the plan was to transfer me.”
Suseran said he is convinced that this move was triggered by his letters to the press and he said he knows that influential persons in the region are very upset with him more so in light of his most recent letter on the children’s parties.
It is not the first time that moves have been made against him as according to the teacher, in 2007 he had written a letter about occurrences at the New Amsterdam Hospital and shortly after he received a lawyer’s letter from the hospital’s administration instructing him to recant the allegations or face legal action. He said because the persons who had complained to him did not want to be exposed he was forced to write a letter saying the allegations were not true.
“So school reopens tomorrow [today] and I don’t know what will happen, I don’t know if I would be transferred, but I would keep the public informed.”
Suseran said many of his letters have expressed anti-government sentiments and that is why he is being targeted even as he stressed that he was not going to be silent and would continue to write about issues affecting society.
“I am not going to stop exposing what needs to be exposed, I am not afraid, they want me to be afraid but I have no fear,” he said.
He noted that his first letter to the media last year was to praise President Jagdeo for the salary increase he gave to public servants as according to him “I would give praise where praise is due.”
Suseran added that while President Jagdeo initially had good intentions he “has changed over the years, so at times I am also angry at him.”
“I am losing faith in the PPP, the PPP party is going to the gutters and they don’t intend to take any criticisms,” and he then made reference to the withdrawal of advertisements from this newspaper for 17 months and the attacks mounted by the government against the Kaieteur News.
“They are bent on the road to dictatorship,” he lamented.
He urged that the two newspapers continue “to do what they are doing as they are the voice of the people in Guyana.”