Dear Editor,
It has now become common for the PPP regime and its agencies to behave as though some segments of the Guyanese population have no rights that they are duty bound to respect. This attitude was poignantly illustrated in the regime’s silence during the spate of extra-judicial killings that shocked many in Guyana and others across the globe. It recently attracted international attention in the issue involving the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union and an expatriate corporation, where the government was clearly in the corner of that corporation’s attempts to destroy the current union representation for Linden workers. The torture of several persons who were in police custody, including allegedly a 14-year-old, and the recent brutal slaying of Kelvin Fraser, adds to the pile of evidence that unequivocally attests to the PPP regime’s complete disassociation from established local and international laws and customs governing the treatment of citizens. Someone has to muster the courage to stand up and say ‘enough’ in this nation where the fear of reprisal for speaking out has become so thick it can figuratively be cut with a knife, and the expression of such courage results in atrocities like journalists being assaulted with cans of faeces thrown in their faces.
The majority of Guyanese, based on the contribution of their ancestors, have earned the right to speak out and challenge the abuses committed on the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens. In this context, when the parents, relatives and sundry members of the community from which the deceased Kelvin Fraser hails, petitioned for our support in their decision to take their protest to the city, we were more than willing to accommodate them. How could we refuse and look at ourselves in a mirror afterwards. Martin Luther King said, “Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.” For me, Freddie Kissoon, David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis, there was no hesitation in our decision to walk the high road of ethical activism in order to bring attention to the ugly degeneracy that is rapidly taking over the operations of virtually every enforcing agency in our country.
Yes, I have been arrested, thrown in jail, and will now have to face a criminal court for daring to be there for a young man who was brutally cut down in the embryonic stages of his growth as a human being. No parent expects to outlive their children, and as a parent who had that experience, I could empathize with the emotions that inundated every nerve centre of the mother and relatives of Kelvin Fraser. To paraphrase the late Martin Luther King again, ‘If we will courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, protest these atrocities that have become endemic to our existence, when the history books of Guyana are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, There lived a great people – a Guyanese people – who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of their civilization.’ Guyanese need to take back their country from those seemingly bent on taking it down the road to perdition. We must summon the courage and intestinal fortitude to confront this war that is being waged against our kids.
Yours faithfully,
Mark A Benschop