The loss of dignity is a natural outcome of dictatorship

Jan 24, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When someone becomes your hero, there is a cluster of memories you keep about that person and they will always spring to mind, and will do so until you leave this world. I am sure the admirers of great humans have some cherished memories of things their heroes have done or said.
For me, one of the vignettes I will always remember about Walter Rodney was a speech he gave at a public meeting.
The topic was the murder trial of a PPP supporter. It was a political trial arising out of the assassination of a policeman who was shot to death at the Number 63 toll station in 1974.
During the day, PPP supporters surrounded the toll station protesting the imposition of a fee to use the newly-built Corentyne highway. As dusk fell on the Corentyne, PPP activists attacked the two sentries, killing one and wounding the other. It was a political act of murder committed by PPP activists, but the question was who the actual shooter was?
In such circumstances, Governments do not distinguish between the actual killer and those in his company. They want someone to pay for the crime committed. Arnold Rampersaud was charged. As was expected, the evidence in such cases is always weak because the State doesn’t have the culprit, but it wants a conviction to teach the other side a lesson.
Young Guyanese may not know about the Rampersaud scenario, but they do know about what happened to Mark Benschop, Oliver Hinckson and others, when the State wanted to teach activists a lesson and couldn’t be bothered with evidence and proof. Well what happened to Benschop, Hinckson and others under the PPP Government, did happen to Arnold Rampersaud under the PNC Government.
Witness after witness gave testimony that was copious and egregious lies. The PPP asked for the support of Rodney. At that public meeting which I will never forget, Rodney threw away his political hat and donned his historian’s garb. Rodney described for the meeting, the bravery of the slaves and how they fought and died for their right to dignity.
He then directly addressed African Guyanese and urged them not to surrender their dignity and go in a courtroom and try to hang an innocent man by lying. He urged the witnesses to emulate their ancestors who chose death over life to preserve their dignity as humans on the slave plantation.
It was one of the most moving speeches at any public meeting in the history of this country.
That was in 1975. But what Rodney saw as the assault on the dignity of the Guyanese citizens is still being practised today in the 21st century. To keep their jobs, public sector employees have to go on the witness stand and lie. To keep their jobs, public sector employees have to go in front of a television camera and lie to hide the crimes of ruling politicians. They even have to besmirch the character of their own colleagues and tell obnoxious lies on victims brutalized by the police.
Vincent Alexander describes a pathetic situation in today’s Guyana that so reminds me of what Walter said at that meeting. In a letter to this newspaper captioned, “The Silence of the Medical and Nursing Councils is Deafening,” Vincent referred to medical personnel who may have violated the sacred Hippocratic Oath in the case of police brutality against Colwyn Harding.
However distasteful has been the action of the medical personnel, we know why they had to say what they said to the press. It is the loss of dignity all over again, as with the Arnold Rampersaud trial. State employees accept the loss of dignity and humiliation because as Martin Carter reminded us, a mouth is muzzled by the food it eats.
I will leave you with one of the most sickening manifestations of how dictatorship takes away the dignity of a person who has to eat. Together with Malcolm Harripaul of APNU (at the time), Mark Benschop, and three AFC leaders – David Patterson, Gerhard Ramsaroop, and Michael Carrington – we staged a picket exercise outside the National Aquatic Centre to force the Government to open the pool to the public.
The next day I did a column on the picket. The day after, a pool official described my behaviour and how I forced my way into the compound and abused the female guard. David Patterson was incensed, he publicly replied. I was nowhere near the gate much less inside the compound, and I never spoke to a female guard because there was no such guard. The poor fellow was forced to lie on me.

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The loss of dignity is a natural outcome of dictatorship

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