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The drums of war

Aug 13, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
Response is made to Ravi Dev’s “Too Little, Too late” (KN August 7th). Dev masquerades as an Indian rights activist but is an enabler of lawlessness in furtherance of his agenda and the destruction of this society.
This is the same person who came to the Guyana Trades Union Congress wanting the Congress to break the rules to have his union (Guyana Sugar Workers Union) become affiliated.
From the outset he has been contemptuous of Africans and this informs his marauding antics to see this race disrespected and oppressed.
I make no apology taking a stand for African equality in this society.
Similarly, I make none for standing with sugar workers and others during the PNC administration and calling for their issues to be addressed.
I questioned not whether those issues were real or perceived; my advocacy was premised on respecting their right to be heard and interpret their reality. Dev is aware of the United Nations Convention on Genocide which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” but harbours no shame denying its presence in furtherance of his racist agenda.
Evidence abounds of the destruction to the African economy by the PPP government which I call economic genocide.
He knows, the PPP knows, and everybody knows, but he thinks if he says it doesn’t exist people would believe it does not, offering the PPP cover to continue their economic annihilation of this community.
Let Dev explain to this nation that the PPP has not partially destroyed the bauxite workers’ economic viability when it took away the tax free overtime they fought for and same extended to sugar workers under the PNC administration even as it today remains in sugar.
Let him tell us it is not economic genocide when bauxite workers’ retirement income is no more because the government destroyed their pension plan worth in excess of $2.5 billion even as it injected US$ 1 million to save the sugar workers’ pension plan.
Let him explain why the government continues to refuse to respect the rights of workers to freedom of association and collective bargaining as in the case of members of the Guyana Bauxite & General Workers Union (GB&GWU) and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) even as these rights are respected in the sugar sector.
Dev is yet to disprove anything I said about this government and because he cannot he cowardly runs from the truth by referring to my identification of these injustices as “extremist.”
Further, he thinks when he says my advocacy for justice and fair play is “beating the drums of war” it will drive fear into Indians, alienate them and further divide the society.
He ignores the fact the drum is common to the culture of all race groups and beaten for various reasons, including gathering the community together to discuss problems and working to solve them. Admittedly I beat the drums of war. I war against inequality, injustices, lawlessness, corruption, economic marginalization, social degeneracy, disorder, poverty, abuse of taxpayers’ money and the nation’s resources, and against people like him who feel only some groups in this society have a right to be heard, that their views alone must matter and that they alone must benefit from the fruits of this nation. I war against these regressive mindsets, actions and policies.
I encourage you to join the voices of Christopher Ram, Freddie Kissoon and others. What Dev calls “extremist” and “beating the drums of war,” be reminded these are the same strategies used to secure emancipation, end indentureship, by Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow to secure social and economic justice for workers, by the Enmore Martyrs to secure sugar workers’ rights, by the colonized to secure independence, to name a few.
And if these strategies were right then they cannot be wrong now, especially given the fact the goal remains the same- the creation of a just society for all. He today wants to demonise them in furtherance of his diabolical agenda.
Lincoln Lewis.

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