Stating that racism needs to be addressed in order for the country to move forward, participants of a virtual speak-out hosted on Friday by Red Thread called for justice for Joel and Isaiah Henry and Haresh Singh, the three teenagers who are believed to have been killed on the basis of their ethnicity.
Joel and Isaiah Henry, both Afro-Guyanese, were found dead about 600 feet from each other in clumps of bushes near a coconut farm last week Sunday. The brutality of the killings, including the mutilation of the teens’ bodies, has fueled suspicions that they were the victims of a hate crime and this led to persons taking to the streets in protest to demand justice. However, the protests turned violent and another teenager, Singh, who is the grandson of the suspects held by police, was killed in what is suspected to have been a retaliatory act.
As a result, the Red Thread group hosted the virtual speak-out, dubbed ‘Moving Forward Better,’ to explore the ways racism in Guyana can be address-ed. Participants included Karen de Souza, Joy Marcus, Susan Collymore, Vanessa Ross, Sherlina Nageer, Andrew Campbell, Laura George, and Delon Moffett.
Speaking at the beginning of the session, Marcus said she cried, cursed, and prayed, because she was hurt, fearful, and angry after the killings.
“Joel, Isaiah and Haresh, they were the sons of Guyana. Nothing can justify the horrific treatment of them. This is without reasoning. Once you are a child, you automatically become my child and to hurt a child, this is really sad. I’m really having a hard time with this because imagine waking up a morning in fear of being attacked in your own community or stepping with confidence because nothing bad happens in our community only to be attacked and beaten like a stranger on the basis of race or ethnic affiliation,” she said.
Marcus added that she has no confidence in the political leaders to resolve the situation. “In my opinion, they are not helping the situation. Their utterances are making the situation worse. This is not the time for blame or try for political mileage. No. How dare they play political [games] with the lives of our children? How could they? I’m really hurt. This is the time to stand together, to address the crisis we are in and our political leaders need to be sensible for once and set a good example,” she stated.
Marcus further stated that she would like to see Guyanese standing together no matter the ethnicity rather than being influenced by political leaders who clearly do not have the best interests of the Guyanese people at heart.
She said that she found it very disrespectful when one political leader said that “I am calling on my people to end the violence,” then proceeding to ask the President to call on “his people” to do the same.
“I find that disrespectful. The only way they can do this is because we allow them to, and I’m saying that if we truly understand the power we have by standing together and we exercise that power political they will have no other choice but to fall in line. They don’t own us. They’re accountable to us and we have to make them accountable to us,” she concluded.
George stated that the fact that political leaders chose to take advantage of the situation for their own agendas was “terrible, shameful and embarrassing.” She noted that Guy-ana has recently emerged from a drawn out and tension-filled elections process and the children being mutilated is contributing to the long-standing issue of mistrust between the ethnicities.
She opined that Guyana needs a very strong Human Rights Commission that can deal with all of the issues that the Guyanese people are facing. She, however, lamented that some bodies already in place, such as the Ethnic Relations Commission, Indigenous Peoples Com-mission, and the Women and Gender Equality Commission, do not appear to be functioning as they should.
Another participant, Karen Budhram, admitted that prior to the killings, when it came to racial tensions, she was very naïve and believed that Guyana was past its racial history. She added that the brutal killing of the three teens shook her to the core and she quickly understood that Afro-Guyanese felt victimized and needed justice and she supported that, but she was still not prepared for the beating and killing of Singh. “I feel disappointed by the ugliness that we are capable of, saddened by the way we are treating each other and hurt by the way we are murdering children because it seems they are the main targets. I feel like we are on the brink of civil war. We still have time to change ourselves. I want justice to be served for the three boys. We must confront the biases within ourselves,” she said.
The participants agreed that racism needs to be addressed immediately if the country wants to move forward and Guyanese need to embrace each other’s differences and interact with one another to understand each other.
Sherlina Nageer said: “I am deeply hurt by the state we are in currently in Guyana as we mourn the loss of Joel, Isaiah, [and] Haresh, but they are not the first. We have many issues to deal with in Guyana and they are all related and we need to learn to embrace difference and realize that, that is a powerful thing because if we are divided it is easy for people to take advantage of us.”
