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Do I detect a note of nostalgia in Rupert Roopnarine’s letter?
Jul 31, 2009 Letters
Dear Editor,
Rupert Roopnarine says that “Mr. Troy Small’s misfortune is that he came under suspicion of having committed the crime of arson not in the dark night of dictatorship but in the bright noon of democracy” in the last paragraph of his letter in the SN of July 26/2009 captioned “Arson then and now.”
I would like to remind Roopnarine that in the broad daylight of Saturday 14 July, 1979 Fr. Bernard Darke S. J. taking photographs for the Catholic Standard was murdered by a bayonet-wielding thug of the House of Israel, one of the paramilitary groups of the PNC while, assistant editor Mike James, his wife and many others were beaten on the very day that he and his comrades were released on bail.
In his second paragraph, Roopnarine recounted “In the early hours of July11, 1979, I, along with a number of other WPA leaders and associates, including Walter Rodney, Omowale, and Kwame Apata, were arrested on suspicion of burning down the Office of the General Secretary of the PNC and Ministry of National Development.” He points out he and his comrades “experienced no physical abuse.
Also in November,1979 WPA activist Ohene Koama was allegedly shot by police when he allegedly pulled an SLR rifle from his car, contradicted by eyewitnesses who said he had no gun.
Another activist was also allegedly shot by police in armed confrontation, but again eyewitnesses said he had no gun.
Roopnarine himself had to escape when a WPA meeting was broken up by thugs and his car was destroyed.
Many of us still remember Burnham publicly joking and laughing at how fast Rodney and others could run and how high they could jump in scaling fences, to escape from thugs who broke up their meetings.
Do I detect a note of nostalgia in Rupert Roopnarine’s letter for the old days?
John Da Silva
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