All the sides in the Roger Khan/Buxton saga

Aug 07, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The first person that called to express surprise that Simels spoke to me was Mark Benschop. Shortly after, it was a prominent city lawyer. And in the same morning two Kaieteur News colleagues asked me about Simels’s revelation.
For the rest of the day, I was bombarded with people’s curiosity. You can’t expect every reader to digest all that you write. Briefly, please go to the March 17 issue of this newspaper for this year and you can read all that was exchanged between me and Simels, where it happened and who were present.
If you don’t have a computer, and you want to read what transpired between me and Simels, then, request a friend to go to Google and print it for you.
Let’s move on to more intriguing dramas. There are some dimensions in the Roger Khan/Buxton saga that are simple but becoming complicated. There may be a PNC version, a PPP version, a GDF side, and a Government interpretation, the view from the African rights activist among others.
Donald Ramotar made a statement that needs to be analysed. I am now introducing another aspect to this long, violent episode. There is a media version. Here is what I know. This is an extremely brief synopsis of the Roger Khan/Buxton waltz (for want of a better description) that is contained in more than twenty essays spread over a period of time in the Kaieteur News and the Guyana Chronicle as requested by then editor Anthony Calder.
First, as I told Mark Benschop when he interviewed me on his radio station Wednesday night, Buxton was no political movement. There is no research to prove otherwise. If there is, this writer would like to see it and I would withdraw those twenty essays.
The angry voices in the village aimed at the Guyana Government for its discrimination against African Guyanese and against police brutality of African youths got drowned in the vortex of criminal mayhem that accompanied the influx of the escapees and violent criminals in Buxton.
Andrew Douglas was the main figure in the plot to escape from the Camp Street jail. He wanted to become an African freedom fighter and had every intention of becoming involved in guerrilla warfare. He got into terrible arguments with the rest of the escapee gang for his political thing.
Secondly, Ronald Waddell was involved with the violent gunmen in Buxton. I use to give money and CDs to a little fellow on Hadfield Street where I lived in Wortmanville. He came from a poor background and years after turned up in Buxton where he became part of a look-out gang.
At the Qik Serv restaurant in Kitty, he told me what Waddell’s indoctrination consisted of. Ronald Waddell instilled into the ears, hearts and minds of the Buxton gunmen that East Indian people are racist, they used Black leaders to get the PPP into power and the PPP will get rid of Black people.
His overall conclusion was that East Indian people were the enemies. I would appeal to Sister Bonita Bone who lived with Waddell to make destiny with her conscience and recognize Waddell for what he was. Months before he died, he began to see that his theory was hurting Black people and strengthening the bond between East Indians and their party, the PPP.
Had he not got assassinated, I believe he would have changed. But Waddell was living dangerously. The Buxton gunmen weren’t interested in guerilla warfare. One of them raped a woman in Friendship. Disagreements broke out between Waddell and them on several occasions.
Thirdly, there were the GDF had rogue elements that were helping the violent men in Buxton. One top GDF officer spoke confidentially to Anthony Calder about this when Calder was editor for Kaieteur News. Calder then hooked me up with this gentleman. He told me that a certain GDF officer (whom we all know) was in the company with Dale Moore celebrating Moore’s birthday on the line top.
A number of media personnel know about the elements in the GDF that were assisting the escapees.
The soldiers’ assistance was out of Black solidarity. But the tragic problem is that the Buxton gunmen were more interested in la dolce vita, killing East Indian businessmen and plain criminal violence. Such a pity that the PPP and its government learnt nothing about the ethnic conceptualizations that existed among African Guyanese that led many of them to show some admiration for the Buxton gunmen.
Finally, media practitioners know that Roger Khan had ongoing relationships with the essential actors in the Government of Guyana. How a Government can descend to that level will forever be seen a self-destructive act of madness.

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All the sides in the Roger Khan/Buxton saga

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