Dear Editor
The Ali/Jagdeo regime has no justification, whatsoever, for their acts of inhumanity toward the people of Mocha Arcadia. The PPP that has for years done nothing to create an equitable housing policy is now with precision moving into certain communities to bulldoze the years of accumulated wealth of a people who they have trampled on and want to relegate to the fringe of society. Don’t tell me there isn’t a better way to deal with this situation even if the government feels it has the right to remove persons from the land.
Even if the land is state reserve, as they are claiming, and which they have provided no evidence of, there is a right and wrong way of doing things. More so, when it is known to all and sundry, the PPP encouraged squatting, using it as a political weapon and to reconfigure its electoral chances. Further, the treatment being meted out to the people of Mocha is not being meted out to other Guyanese, considered supporters of the PPP, or where other ethnic groups dominate.
No efforts are spared to accommodate these persons’ demands, ensure comparable relocation (cost and land) and regularise the land situation so their rights to own property, and earn, could be safeguarded. Are the people of Mocha Arcadia not deserving of similar respect and treatment?
Mocha was bought by freed Africans in the immediate post-emancipation period. Those persons pooled their pennies, earned during the amelioration period, and converted a coffee plantation to a village and village economy, from ground up. Mocha and its people are symbols of African pride, achievements, capacity and capability, and by extension, Guyana’s. Who of conscience would agree that what is happening to these people is acceptable in the 21st century.
Unfortunately, I have seen persons on social media seeking to justify the inhumanity, to make political mileage. I say without fear of being challenged that were these residents of another hue, those who today revel in the abuse being meted out to them would not have tolerated it were it inflicted on them or the people they feel a kinship to, regardless of who is in government. This nation is losing its sense of moral decency, consciousness and humanity of one towards another.
What we are witnessing is no different than what occurred during the immediate post emancipation period, albeit it was not with bulldozers, to kill the spirit, destroy and dismantle the struggle of a people for self-determination and to live on their feet with dignity and pride.
Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill, considers himself a man of the cloth, but we must not be afraid to question what manner of man that wears the cloth would delight or find comfort in such callousness. What manner of persons, occupying the seat of government, could conceptualise and implement a policy to actively pursue and destroy the accumulated wealth a people earned through years of sacrifices and struggles?
This issue is not only about the law, it is about the moral mooring of this nation which has clearly lost its anchor. This is a vexing situation and we who believe in the rule of law have to constantly remind ourselves that law and moral persuasion could still be the order of the day in response to acts of hostility, and attacks on human decency.
Women, the backbone of the family and society, are laying their bodies on the ground to protect not only what they have worked hard for, but also their children and family, and to ensure the preservation of what the nation was constituted to be- a land of the free, where all are treated equally, where the laws are not only applicable to some but all, where the resources of the nation are for the benefit of all not a few. That these women felt compelled to use their bodies as shields is not only indicative of their worth and fighting spirit, but they have exposed for the world to see the brutish leaders we have.
Sincerely,
Lincoln Lewis