The masterminds have made Buxton-Friendship a human wasteland

Posted April 6th. 2003 by Eusi Kwayana.

Mr. Brian Hamilton’s killing is a tragedy for his parents, his friends, his fellow villagers and for his generation. Clearly it is a loss to the African community with its concerns of scarce business resources.

He was not killed by Indians. He was taken after the disturbances had already killed the family business which he managed. They first marginalised him and then killed him on suspicion, just like the Black clothes.

It is, sadly, a clear example of where the five for freedom are leading their “kith and kin”. There had been a habit, whenever a prosperous Indian was killed by the “five for freedom”, to explain it by the phrase “drug related”.

Attacks by misguided youth on average or poor Indians were explained by “marginalisation”. What now? Is anyone going to try those dumb defences? Everybody knows - or believes - that security cameras at Hamilton’s office picked up the suspects. The press reported once that villagers without guns helped to defend a gunman who had shot someone on the public road.

Before that Devi Mathura had accused me of condoning similar behaviour. Assuming that behaviour is correctly reported, and is typical, what will they do when the victim is Brian Hamilton? A little over a year ago, gunmen from Buxton robbed and beat Viveyk Parsram, whose shop at Annandale employed several villagers. He was robbed on two other occasions under the guidance of “sophisticated leadership”. Perhaps the street defenders found it easy to choose between a strange victim, and a native gunman in their midst.

If we are to get as low as that, who, if not strangers, brought the prisoners there, and brought the guns there, the guns that finally robbed a favourite of his life. Most people, including my colleagues and I certainly, have condemned the gunmen for their crimes.

I want to go back to my point about the masterminds. You mean, even this will not make certain people condemn the killers? It is not then that they don’t feel the pain of Indians. They don’t even feel Brian’s pain. They don’t feel Mackenzie’s pain. They do not even feel. They are loyal to some higher purpose. What can it be? Yes. I am rubbing it in, because the old people used to say, “When you own louse bite you, you well bite.” By masterminds I mean those who, after the 2001 elections, preached what they called revolution. I mean also those, less visible, who must have obtained arms and transported them to unknown numbers of young men.

I mean politically empty persons, those who a year late plotted with insiders to lodge the escaped prisoners in our village. I mean those who advised child soldiers that beating up PPP supporters were going to bring down the government. I mean those who allowed their “supporters” and “their people” to take all the blame while they came and went about with clean looking hands. I mean people with influence among the masses, but without the culture to use that influence. That’s what I mean by masterminds. Some are going to remain silent at this offence. They will say, “Don’t play into the hands of the government”.

They mean, “Don’t rock the boat!” “ Don’t split the vote!”. Members of ASCRIA will remember that in 1971 that organisation came to the conclusion that in Guyana there could be no revolution of any one race. That was where the cultural revolution, launched by us in 1968, led us. After long argument we had resolved that historically it was Europeans and not Indians who were the enemies of Africans. That is why we could move close to IPRA (Indian Political Revolutionary Associates), and later join with others to form the WPA.

Since then there has been no careful collective thought and argument about the state of African descendants as part of the Guyanese society in what was the 20th entury. A fresh, healthy political expression of new forces will always be welcome to me and I was glad for Walter Rodney’s intellectual leadership. We didn’t claim “seniority” and play stiff. Later, I took a leading part in drafting ACDA’s founding principles which placed it among the most enlightened ethnic-cultural organisations in the hemisphere. In the tit -for -tat climate I believed one had to take the lead.

The intention is clearly written in that document. ACDA should either scrap it or embrace it. Bloodshed offends the modern human or civilised conscience. There are movements setting standards for the killing of animals. There is a worldwide movement against capital punishment. There are Geneva Conventions about killing even in the brutality of a war. President Bush is at pains to convince the world that his war is not aimed at civilians.

After Bosnia, Rwanda, Zaire, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, we have in Guyana a movement born in the 21st century but worthy of the Dark Ages in Europe. They support the burial industry, which is in no need of a larger market.

The masterminds gave weapons they have not taken back. They have trained killers they cannot control. They have swapped their brains for guns and guns are in control. They have made Buxton-Friendship a human wasteland. All this while I am not ignoring what a Guyanese criminologist said in 2002 about the escaped prisoners. I think he said that in that frame of mind they cared nothing and expected the worst.

Why do I advise a public address to the gunmen and the killers in particular? They are within the jurisdiction. Addressing them will put them and the entire public on notice that standing idly by is aiding and abetting.