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The ugly presence of fascism on West Bank, Demerara
We paid a mini-bus owner to transport 13 protestors from Patentia to Georgetown. This was in connection with the police shooting of 16-year-old Kelvin Fraser. He was not taking more than 13 passengers because he was afraid of being arrested. We paid him to transport the protestors back to Patentia. That was the end of that. The vehicle that the police identified for investigation was a Canter truck.
Its owner was charged and his vehicle illegally seized. I say illegally, because at the time of writing, the police cannot tell our lawyers why after being slapped with three minor charges, the vehicle is still embargoed in the compound of Brickdam Police Station.
On Saturday, the mini-bus owner complained to me of police harassment. He has been ordered to report to Brickdam this morning. What is there to report for? The answer is clear.
Either he will be arrested on some trump up charge or he will have fear driven into him so that he will stay millions of miles away from any protest. Who ordered the confiscation of the Canter truck and who is behind the victimization of the mini-bus driver? It is not the police. The police are taking orders from their political bosses. Who are these political bosses?
Let us rewind the tape to the seventies and eighties. The party in opposition was the PPP. They claimed that the Burnham Government was a dictatorship and they confronted the Burnham regime. They cried out against police brutality, human rights violations and discrimination. Those who cried back then are now in power and let us see who is who in the game of fascism.
The police are called to a scene outside of a school in Patentia. The offenders are all small children. Why the police would want to draw guns in the midst of a confused scene with young children remains a mystery. A child is shot to death.
No one came to the comfort of the aggrieved mother. Four of us traveled to Patentia on the West Bank to comfort her – me, Mark Benschop, Dr. David Hinds of the Working People’s Alliance and General-Secretary of the Caribbean Congress of Labour, Lincoln Lewis. We spoke to the weeping mother and her husband. We participated in picket action and we demonstrated.
We brought the protesting students and some of the villagers to Georgetown outside of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Then fascism showed its face. Small amounts of money were being given to the families, so small it was insulting and shocking.
Then came fascism’s clever move. The grieving mother refused to see the four of us on Saturday evening. We began to speak to family members and were told that leaders of the ruling party descended upon Patentia on Friday afternoon after our protest outside the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Money was allocated for the wake, tents were brought in from Freedom House and promises were made to finance the funeral. Then came the gargantuan warning – the family should not have anything to do with Frederick Kissoon and Mark Benschop. The family became divided. Sisters and cousins began to pull apart. Some agreed to the PPP’s terms for financial support, other family units wanted a bigger force to be formed to continue the protest.
The greatest division came from the villagers themselves. Many of them did not agree with Kelvin Fraser’s mother that she should shut us out. We went to talk to her but she refused to speak to us. Some villagers told us that they will continue the struggle and that the killing of Kelvin Fraser was not only the concern of his mother but the entire country and that mother or no mother they will protest and demonstrate until the police force is reformed.
A few family members told us that Kelvin Fraser’s mother is not annoyed with us, appreciate what we did for her when the protest started but that she is being intimidated. She works at one of the Ministries and she has been warned not to accommodate me and Benschop.
On Saturday evening, I saw an emotional side to Dr. David Hinds that I have never seen in all those years when we were youths with the WPA in the struggle against Burnham. When two relatives told us that $150,000 was promised, David Yelled out; “God, these people are indecent.” I guess he knew that was the price the fascists put on the life of 16-year-old Kelvin Fraser
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