April 30, 2003

 

AN OPEN LETTER TO GUYANESE WOMEN AND MEN                                              

From Red Thread (thread@sdnp.org.gy)

 

This letter will be updated as necessary and sent to the print media for publication in their letter columns over the weekend of May 3-4, 2003-04-30

 

A Time to Break Silence

 

“A time comes when silence is betrayal”.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr., in a speech delivered on April 4, 1967 in New York against the Vietnam War.

 

At 11.30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 30, 2003, Red Thread will end the round-the-clock vigil which it started 312 hours earlier, at 11.30 a.m. on Thursday, April 17.

 

Locally, participants in the vigil included parents of children attending Joshua Bell’s school, teachers, lawyers and other professionals, members of the judiciary, prominent and small businesswomen and men, teachers, Catholic nuns, and Members of Parliament. Members of several groups joined in, including members of Women against Violence Everywhere (WAVE), Women across Differences (WAD), G+ (Guyanese Living with HIV/AIDS), Joint Initiative for Humanity and Development (JIHAD), the Ethnarch of the Kingdom of Manumitted Africans of Guyana, Guyana Youth and Students Movement (GYSM), and the University of Guyana Students Society (UGSS).  Workers paused on their way to work to join in. Other passersby stopped, listened, and went away to bring donations of money and food. Several men came to provide security for those of us standing vigil between midnight and 6 a.m.

 

Internationally, the vigil had the full backing of the Red Thread supporters’ network in Toronto and of the Global Women’s Strike, a network of women in over 70 countries which campaigns for all governments to invest in caring not killing.

 

Here and everywhere, as women we know that women, and particularly mothers, are usually the ones who lead the fight for justice for our families and communities.  On this continent, the Mothers of the Disappeared stood up publicly to military dictatorship in Argentina in the 70s when no one else did; and today, 80% of family campaigners against disappearances are women. In Guyana, we have the example of Mothers in Black protesting the absence of justice for their children slaughtered by the uncaring driving that is one of the many forms of assault on our children’s safety.

 

As we said in our “Statement from the Vigil” of Wednesday, April 23, the immediate impetus for the vigil was the kidnapping, torture, and murder of 16-year-old Joshua Bell. We were outraged at the contrast between the inaction of the authorities in the face of this atrocity and the flurry of activity which followed the almost simultaneous kidnapping of the US diplomat. This contrast cannot be explained away simply by the authorities’ desire to promote good international relations. Rather, it points to the fact that in the 21st century, many in authority still operate by the racist standards of slavery and indenture which valued other lives more than our own.

 

This is why the children of Guyana can be wounded and killed and nobody is brought to justice. A partial list of child victims (children under 18) includes the following, some of whose names have not been made public:

Victims of murder and attempted murder - Mervyn Barran of Enterprise, Marlon Joseph of Buxton, Yohance Douglas of Georgetown,  Su Zhi Wei of Agricola, Shalimi Smith of Victoria.

Victims of kidnapping and attempted kidnapping – A 13-year-old girl, a 15-year-old boy and a baby from Annandale; 16- year-old Vishan Seejodie, 16-year-old Amrit and his cousin from Lusignan; Moti’s daughter from Strathspey Primary School, an eight-year-old girl from Coldingen.

 

Then there are the damaged and traumatized children who have had to watch their parents beaten, raped, and murdered.

 

There are others we do not know about; none has been deliberately omitted, and we are committed to compiling a full list both to honour the children who have been wounded and killed by demanding that each life be counted and valued, and to counter speculation and lies with facts.

 

In almost every case where a child has been attacked, rumour spreads that the child’s parents or other adult relatives were involved in some criminal activity. This inference of guilt against the loved ones of the victim hides other people’s guilt.  It is despicable enough when the victims are other adults, but making grieving parents responsible for the murder of their children committed by others is inhuman.

 

And here is the heart of the problem. While some of the violence is racist in intent and some  is not, all of it is being used to make us still more racially divided and therefore more vulnerable. This is why the children in Guyana are not safe – because in Guyana today, we are told to believe that the hurt of a child, even the death of a child, does not matter except if she or he is one of “ours”.  But they are ALL ours.  Every mother who has lost a child knows the pain of another mother who has lost a child, whatever their race.  Every human being worthy of the name can appreciate that pain. 

 

In the last week there has been movement towards breaking the impasse between government and opposition. Agreement on the establishment of the Parliamentary Management Committee will give opposition parties in Parliament a say in setting the parliamentary agenda.  This development is in response to popular pressure  for increased power-sharing in Parliament between parties representing the two main race groups.  While the vigil expressed and was a part of the pressure for change, it was not pressing for change only from one side or for one side.  It was not paying less attention to the rights of Indigenous people than to the rights of others. We do not want the safety only of some children. We know that unless EVERY child is safe, ALL our children are in danger.

 

We understand that an end to the PNC/R’s year-long boycott of the Parliament is imminent, and hope that Government has responded by taking steps to clear the obstacles to establishing the reform measures necessary for Parliament to function more democratically. Now that the way has been opened to meetings between President Jagdeo and the Leader of the Opposition, the country expects that they will give priority to the violent crime overwhelming the country,  abandoning all selective condemnations of the violence. In these new conditions, we call for an immediate response to the demand made in the Wednesday 23 Statement from the Vigil for the urgent convening of a special, single-issue sitting of the National Assembly, with all parties present, to hear and debate an official statement from the Minister of Home Affairs on the situation of violent crime in Guyana, with special reference to the killing of Joshua Bell and more generally, to the safety of Guyana’s children. The mother of each child hurt or killed has a right to know what those in charge of our society have done and not done to solve the crimes.

 

If the Minister of Home Affairs continues to be unable or unwilling to do his job, he must go - and the new Commissioner of Police must be appointed so we can make a new start.

 

In calling an end to our 24-hour-a-day vigil, Red Thread and the other members of the community who have held vigil for 312 uninterrupted hours are far from calling an end to our campaigning against violence and racism in Guyana. We will watch over the days ahead to see if the government and the opposition  take effective steps to end the violence.  And we can make them act - we can make them represent us which they are paid to do - if  more of us who abhor the violence and the racism speak out. In Guyana, we are well past the time when silence became betrayal.