Dear Editor,
Your Sunday, June 9th report on the celebration of Andaiye carried the following
inaccuracies which appear to have their origin in the Department of Public Information report of the previous day.
1. A “funeral service” was held…. A celebration of life was held at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre. The proceedings had no religious content.
2. “Tributes were made by several members of the WPA…and members of the opposition.” There was one tribute from the Working Peoples’ Alliance which was presented by Tacuma Ogunseye. No member of the opposition spoke.
3. The state owned newspaper in a return to the old party refusal to accept that women can organise separately from political parties even if some persons are associated with a party, dubbed Red Thread the “women’s arm of the WPA”. Red Thread is not and has never been an arm of the WPA, nor have we ever had an organisational allegiance to the WPA or any other political party.
4. I have not been able to find again the specific reference to “Andaiye Williams”, so am unsure if it was a news report or a letter. Andaiye had one name. On forms which insisted on the presence of two names she would insert nfn (no first name) Andaiye.
If the Department of Public Information is going to be careless with easily checked facts, national newspapers should be wary of reproducing information from that source without fact checking.
Yours faithfully,
Karen de Souza,
Red Thread
