Once again, our sister Caribbean nation of Guyana finds itself in the throes of extreme racial strife!
The general condition of Indian-African tension in Guyana was plunged to dangerous levels by the July 18, 2012 killing of three African Guyanese men by armed officers of the Guyana Police Force.
The three men – Shemroy Bouyea, Ron Somerset and Allan Lewis – were part of a group of black civilian demonstrators who had occupied the Wismar-Mackenzie bridge in order to protest against the government’s imposition of a 400 per cent increase in electricity rates on the residents of Linden.
Needless to say, the population of Linden is almost exclusively black or African while the People’s Progressive Party/Civic government of Guyana is considered to be predominantly “Indian”.
These facts alone would tend to spell trouble in Guyana’s ever present climate of racial suspicion, but matters are further compounded by the fact that, historically, Linden was the scene of the two most infamous incidents of racial violence in Guyana – the 1964 Indian bombing of the African populated “Sun Chapman” launch on the Demerara River and the ugly and brutal retaliatory violence that members of the “African” population of Linden inflicted on their “Indian” fellow residents.
And so, it was not surprising that the police killings were immediately interpreted in terms of race.
Furthermore, over the past several years, literally scores of young male Afro-Guyanese have been murdered by death squads associated with largely Indian underworld figures and drug syndicates.
The condition of racial fear and animosity in Guyana has its genesis in the British colonial authorities’ policy of importing indentured labourers from India in order to supplant the labour of the newly emancipated African working class, and also in the nefarious manner in which the British and American establishments set out to subvert and destroy the initially biracial and socialist People’s Progressive Party by fomenting racial divisions and suspicions.
Sometimes people are so tightly enmeshed in a situation that they find it extremely difficult to view things objectively and discern possible solutions.
The People’s Empowerment Party (PEP) believes that this recent Guyana incident demands a response from CARICOM and its member governments, but, even more importantly, from organized Caribbean civil society!
The PEP is calling upon the leaders of our Caribbean civil society to put together a broad-based and diverse pan-Caribbean investigatory team to visit Guyana for the purpose of engaging with the Guyanese people on the issue of the African/Indian racial dilemma.
Of course, we are not suggesting any attempt at an unwelcome outside imposition on the people of Guyana. Needless to say, contact should first be made with the relevant civil society organizations of Guyana and the entire initiative should be a collaborative one.
Surely, it is long past time for us to do something about these racial issues that are holding back not only Guyana, but, by extension, the entire region.
Racial problems are not insoluble. Indeed, there are several precedents that we could examine for mechanisms to resolve and transcend racial antagonisms, inclusive of the relatively successful examples of Malaysia and Singapore.
• The PEP column represents the views of the People’s Empowerment Party.
