The drumbeat of ethnically divisive messages

Nov 05, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The dangerous and pulsating drumbeat of race-baiting and divisive rhetoric as often evidenced in the taxpayer funded state newspaper, Guyana Chronicle, only serves to lead Guyanese down the path to further social, political, geographic and economic division, a division that will spell disaster for this budding nation.
The irresponsible assertions in the Sunday 28 October editorial titled,  Despotic opposition leaders again hold nation to ransom,” following the racist charges in the Monday 2 July editorial titled,  Opposition rampages to sow disunity in the country” as well as the myriad of false and divisive assertions made by several PPPC Ministers through the multiple taxpayer funded media channels regarding Agricola and the COI ,collectively, will drive the nation to the dangerous precipice of ethnic conflict.
The divisive assertions seem intended to reinforce fears which motivate the PPPC constituency to ignore massive corruption, extrajudicial killings, growing unemployment, rising crime, poor water, sewage and electricity infrastructure as well as the poor quality of education and healthcare offered to citizens.
The consequence of which is continued political dominance by the PPPC party, no real social or economic change, no big vision of unity and development, pervasive racial discrimination and the restriction of an entire ethnic group from benefiting from the resources, which belong to all the citizens of Guyana.
The PPPC party must know that citizens whose ancestors worked hard to build the nation of Guyana, village by village, will not in perpetuity accept second class citizenship in the land of their birth.
The drumbeat of ethnically divisive messages sent to the PPPC constituency is not good for national unity, neither is it the right message for a developing nation, which must depend on the strength and input of every citizen in order to achieve the nation’s development goals.
It appears that the Guyana Chronicle and the other state-funded media outlets have taken the gamble that they will be able to manage the message of racial division in such a way as to ensure a continuation of ethnic voting patterns, but not so much as to push the nation over the edge of ethnic conflict leading to violence and worst yet, partitioning.
The problem with this scenario is that once the message of ethnic division reaches a fever pitch, once enough citizens are infected with the propaganda used to revive old stereotypes and fears, then it becomes difficult to apply the brake, resulting in only some small spark to set the nation ablaze. Guyana is too small a nation, too ethnically diverse a nation, too ethnically interdependent a nation, and too armed a nation to survive an all-out descent into national ethnic violence.
The lessons of history are clear and we have only to look at the suffering and despair caused by the partitioning of India on 14 August, 1947; which saw the birth of the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan, to understand the ultimate consequence of a divided society. It was a painful division, which resulted in the displacement of 15 million people and the deaths of more than 1 million Indian citizens. It was the culmination of discrimination, suspicion, fears, stereotypes and religious division, pushed upon a population that once lived in peace with neighbours of all religions. It is a brutal lesson of history from which our great nation of Guyana must learn and more importantly when the fever of partition began, even the great leader Mahatma Ghandi was powerless to stop it.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
Citizens of Guyana must not allow those who benefit most from racial division to set us one against the other. Our fortunes are tied to each other and we must continue to reach out across the ethnic divide to understand each other, to support each other, and to live in peace with each other. Citizens must reject the politics of race and must be suspicious of any attempt to vilify and label one ethnic group as violent and aggressive and label another as innocent victims.
We are all citizens and we are all human, and as such, each and every one of us is capable of violence, anger, love, hate, war and peace. If Guyana is to develop into the great nation, we yearn for her to be, if we are to leave a better nation for our children, if we are to seek a future of peace, then we must embrace the politics of unity and hope and change, and we must insist that the taxpayer-funded media channels for which all citizens pay, end the divisive messaging and represent the interests of all Guyanese.
Karen Abrams

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