Dear Editor,
Like the rest of the world, we in Guyana witnessed with pain and horror the brutal murder of George Floyd on May 25th in Minneapolis, USA by a white policeman, invoking memories of the centuries of lynching of black men in the United States of America, where so many of our Guyanese and Caribbean citizens have made their homes. The protests in the USA and globally are palpable expressions of the truth and consequences of racial profiling, of unequal treatment under the law and the rise in white supremacy.
Who will ever forget George Floyd pleading not once but twenty times for air? “I can’t breathe, please…”
The coroner’s report gives the cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression”. In other words, his death is officially a homicide from asphyxia (lack of oxygen) due to compression (sustained pressure) on his neck and back caused by a police officer. This is also borne out by the independent autopsy report.
As members of civil society in Guyana, we urge the Chair and Secretary-General of CARICOM and the Caribbean Commu-nity to raise their voices in protest against Donald Trump and his government in all possible spaces. We urge that Guyana, as chair of the Group of 77, at the United Nations uses all its influence to ensure that the United States of America is sanctioned for its increasingly pivotal role in the nurturing of white supremacy and increasing militarisation.
There have been protests the world over in solidarity with the family of George Floyd and in condemnation of his killing and of racism. In the wake of his death, we remember 26-year-old Breonna Taylor – a medical worker in Louisville Kentucky – shot to death on in her home on March 13, and Tony McDade, 38-year-old trans person, who was shot by police in Tallahas-see, Florida on May 27th – reported by the Human Rights Campaign as the 12th trans-gender person to be killed in in the USA in 2020. In a Washington Post “Fatal Force” mapping of persons in the USA shot and killed by police in 2019, the figure stands at 1,004, the majority of them being African-American.
The words of writer James Baldwin resonate decades after he wrote them with powerful meaning today in a very sick, very powerful country where state violence aimed at African-Americans is on the rise.
“And at the centre of this dreadful storm, this vast confusion, stand the Black People of this nation, who must now share the fate of a nation that has never accepted them, to which they were brought in chains. Well, if this is so, one has no choice but to do all in one’s power to change that fate, and at no matter what risk – eviction, imprisonment, torture, death. For the sake of one’s children in order to minimise the bill that they must pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion – and the value placed on the colour of the skin is always and everywhere and forever a delusion. I know that what I am asking is impossible. But in our time, as in every time, the impossible is the least that one can demand – and one is, after all, emboldened by the spectacle of human history in general, and American Negro history in particular, for it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible.”
Black Lives Matter. Always. Everywhere.
In the multi-racial society that is Guyana, we in civil society, individually and collectively raise our voices in condemning the murder of George Floyd, calling for justice and standing in solidarity with George Floyd and all victims of racism, extra judicial killings and state brutality. We close with the words of Martin Carter from Poems of Affinity: As New As Old (II)
… New and Old
is the face of the world’s great grief,
…A green leaf
on the branch of a tree fingers
our time’s disgraceful space. We
are its measure.”
Yours faithfully,
Vanda Radzik
Jocelyn Dow
Josephine Whitehead
Donald Rodney
Vidyaratha Kissoon
Dave Martins
Maj Gen Joseph Singh
(Ret’d)
Edward Greene
Ian McDonald
Charles Guyana (Anglican
Bishop)
Francis Alleyne RC
Bishop of Georgetown
Mike McCormack
Denise Dias – Mothers in
Black
Roy & Monica Beepat
Alissa Trotz
Danuta Radzik
Help & Shelter
Linda Hustler-Gray
Gaitrie Shivsankar.
Akola Thompson
Women’s Wednesdays
Guyana
Omattie Madray
ChildLink
Suraiya Ismail
Rev Patricia Sheerattan-
Bisnauth – Guyana
Presbyterian Church
Krysta Bisnauth
Angelina DeAbreu
National Toshaos Council
Executive
Nicholas Fredericks
– Shulinab
Beverley Clenkian
– St Cuthbert’s
Russian Dorrick-
Yupukari
Paul Pierre – Kwebana
Marbel Thomas –
Campbelltown
Ricky Boyle – Kimbia
Jude B Da Silva
Rose Roberts
Jacqueline Allicock
– Chair NRDDB
Ivor Marslow – NRDDB
Immaculata Casimero
– Aishalton
Tranaparency Institute of
Guyana Inc.
Frederick Collins
Alfred Bhulai
Sherlina Nageer
Red Thread
Karen de Souza
Vanessa Ross
Wintress White
Susan Collymore
Joy Marcus
Halima Khan
Ayo Dalgety-Dean
Ferlin Pedro
Joan McDonald
Women & Gender
Equality Commission
Pauline Bullen
Nicole Cole – Rastafari
Community Rep
Colin Edwards
Deirdre Jafferally
Alim Hosein
Al Creighton
Rene & Tina Edwards
Salima Bacchus-Hinds
Anna Iles
Joel Simpson
Kobe Smith
SASOD
SWAG
Melanie McTurk
Renata Chuck-a-Sang
Aisha Fraites
Christina Dow
Abbyssinian Carto
Vikki Helmich
Ingrid Sarabo
Raquel Thomas
Citizens Against Rape
Janette Bulkan
Mary Valenzuela
Ohene Koama
Daphne Johnson
Rev Compton Meerabux
Guyana Human Rights
Association
General Workers Union
Policy Forum Guyana
Guyana Society for the
Blind
ECD7CleanUp Committee
Guyana Community-
Based Rehabilitation
Michelle Kalamandeen
Larry Carryl
Mahendra Doraisami
Natasha George
Marcian Gravesande
Merle Mendonca
Sr. Hazel David
Joy De Florimonte
Padmoutie Pooran
Norris Witter
Meshack Pierre
Sr. Mary Peter Ngui, OSU
Benita Davis
Donneth Kellman
Winston Davis
Joel Thompson, SJ
Cecil Murray
Hazel Sears
Oliver Carr
Asif Khan
Paul Martin, SJ
Hugh Glasgow
Njuma Nelson
UG Female
Empowerment Movement
