Hopefully, this despicable individual will fall or perish on his/her sword of hate and racism

Aug 07, 2014 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
The issue of Reparations has now unfortunately been addressed by the foremost racial entrepreneur in Guyana: the extraordinary cowardly Sultan Mohamed. Not being someone who is registered in GECOM’s list of voters, he/she uses a fictitious name to spew racial poison on our youth and on our Nation.
Cowardice and racism are this fictitious person’s calling cards.
A better name would have been Dr. Death. He/She represents the death of truth; the death of justice; the death of democracy and the death of equality.  In his latest racist approach to Indian hegemony in Guyana, Dr. Death attacks Prof. Emeritus Clive Thomas for stating reparations should not go to governments but to the descendants of African slaves.
Only a true hereditary racist could attack Dr. Thomas for such a stand. The case for Reparations is for Indigenous Genocide and African Slavery. These were the harmed. Why should anyone else be awarded payments other that those murdered and enslaved?
Dr. Death mentions “the PNC government seized the Indian Immigration Fund and built a single National Cultural Center in Georgetown”. Dr. Death never mentions how much money was seized to build a structure that could not have cost US$1 million decades ago.
Dr. Death fails to mention to the Public that freed Africans were the ones that partially subsidized the passage of Indentured Servants from India to Guyana. Millions and millions of US dollars at that time much yet in today’s value. Perhaps Dr. Death conveniently stayed away from the three-hour speech of fellow Guyanese and UK based Professor Clem Seecharan who this February at the Umana Yana said and wrote:
“The counter resilient African antipathy to indentured migrants (whose introduction they were made to partially subsidise), perceived as subverting their enhanced bargaining position with their former owners, the sugar planters.
Having received no compensation for their enslavement over more than two centuries, freed Africans experienced the rapid erosion of their embryonic bargaining advantage of the 1840s, with the accelerated importation of indentured labourers throughout the latter half of the 19th century.
By the 1890s they saw Indians as the greatest threat  to their future in the colony  – as the numerically and economically ascendant group,  pampered by planters, while they languished in penury as a result: the ‘alien coolie’ was here to stay, with  potential to dominate.
This was exacerbated by fears that prominent Indians, such as J.A. Luckhoo and Dr William Hewley Wharton, were committed to creating an ‘Indian Colony’, with the possible renewal of immigration from India, after the end of indentureship in 1920. African apprehensions were sustained in the 1930s, when prominent Indians, such as Peter Ruhomon and C.R. Jacob, advocated building of a ‘greater India’ in Guyana. This imbedded a resilient fear among African Guyanese that they would lose everything to the Indian juggernaut. Moreover, the notion that British Guiana is an El Dorado, with stupendous resources, has fed continual apprehension between Africans and Indians that whoever inherits the kingdom is on the royal road to a Golden Age.”
Dr. Death speaks about equality in today’s Guyana when Africans and Amerindians who are almost 60% of the population own less than 5 % of GDP and this can be traced to discrimination during and after slavery.
Perhaps Dr. Death should read the works of Odeen Ishmael as illustrated in his book “The Guyana Story (From Earliest Times to Independence)”.
Here Dr. Death will find Indians apart from being paid wages were given State lands while Africans who worked free for 200 plus years in the harshest of conditions received none.
1.    In 1896 Helena, an abandoned sugar plantation on the west bank of the Mahaica River, was purchased by the Government. It was then surveyed and divided into lots, and the old drainage canals were also cleared.  Distribution of house lots and cultivation plots to the selected settlers began in April 1897, and by the time this process was completed, 1,206 persons were in possession of land in the settlement.
2.    The Whim settlement started in September 1898 when land for housing and cultivation was allocated to settlers. By March 1899, land was shared out to 574 persons. The settlers cultivated mainly rice, but also planted coconuts, coffee and fruit trees. With their earnings from the sugar estates they were able to erect better houses than their counterparts at Helena.
3.    A third settlement for Indians was established at Bush Lot in West Berbice. The area was an abandoned estate which was heavily indebted to the Government for rates, and the proprietor sold it to the Government for $1,200. Comprising of an area of 1,306 acres of which 463 acres were waste land, it was handed over to the Return Passage Committee in March 1897.  The early settlers of Bush Lot experienced the problems associated with the drought of 1899 and their rice crop was severely affected. Even though house lots and cultivation plots began to be distributed from 1899, it was not until February 1902 that Bush Lot was officially declared an Indian settlement. A sum of $40,000 acquired from the immigration fund was spent on laying out the settlement and the digging by shovel-men of a canal, over three miles long, to the Abary River to obtain water supply.
4.    Maria’s Pleasure on the island of Wakenaam started in 1902 when 168 lots were distributed. However, only 40 persons built homes and rice and coconuts were cultivated. But since most of the new land owners could not be found, not enough rates were collected.
5.    In 1912-13, the Government purchased the abandoned estates of Unity-Lancaster on East Coast Demerara from their owners and improved the drainage and irrigation canals. The land was then divided into one-acre plots which were sold for $20 each.
6.    Around the same period Clonbrook, another abandoned estate just a mile to the west of Unity-Lancaster, was also purchased by the Government and divided into house lots and cultivation plots. Each house lot was sold for $30 while a cultivation plot cost $20.
7.    On the West Coast Demerara, Windsor Forest and La Jalousie, with a combined area of 3,000 acres, was offered for rent at a rate of one dollar per acre for the first year, and six dollars for each subsequent year. The tenants had the option of purchasing the land by paying $8.50 per acre for 25 years. A nearby estate, Hague, was also leased out in lots and offered under similar terms.
Indo Guyanese were empowered. Similarly the Chinese and Portuguese. The Portuguese were allowed to break their indentureship contracts with impunity and were further helped to set up businesses through support from Madeira and from good commercial credit terms from the British But Africans were never empowered. Today, the economic, social and cultural inequalities are evident.
Dr. Death wants equality today but says nothing about the more than 99 %of commercial lands given to Indians from Guyana, India and Trinidad, Chinese from China and Suriname, Russians, Malaysians etc.
Dr. Death wants equality in reparations but not equality in death, rape, genocide, and other crimes against humanity.
If Dr. Death isn’t a functional illiterate and that explains his racism then he should already know the facts about slavery and Indigenous genocide.
For Africans descendants in Guyana
·    3 % of our ancestors died during  attacks of villages to gain slaves
·    20% died on the murderous trek to the coast  from interior villages
·    10% died while waiting in prisons and dungeons for  ships to arrive
·    12 % died during the Trans-Atlantic journey
·    33%  of those that arrived in Guyana died during the first 3 years
So in a peaceful village of 200 Africans only a few reached Guyana.
As Sir Hilary Beckles recently, in June, stated at the House of Commons: of the 5.5 million captured Africans brought to this part of the World, only 800,000 remained at Emancipation. This is a survival rate of 15%. At Emancipation, there were 84,035 freed Africans in Guyana. Perhaps, Dr. Death can calculate how many Africans died in Guyana for his Freedom; for the right of Dr. Death’s descendants to even be brought to Guyana.
Does Dr. Death know Africans worked free for over 215 years to build Guyana before his ancestors arrived here? There were no snakes, deadly swamps, genocide when his forefathers came to Guyana with contracts.
Does Dr. Death want to share with the Nation that “History has also recorded and forgotten that (Guyanese) Africans “had driven back the sea and had cleared, drained and reclaimed 15,000 square miles of forest and swamps?” This is equivalent to 9,000,000 acres of land. In short, all the fields on which the sugar estates are now based were cleared, drained and irrigated by African labour forces. All the plantations now turned villages and cities were built by unpaid African labour. In the process of building these plantations, careful research has shown that Africans installed the following (1) 2,580,000 miles of drainage canals, trenches and inter-bed drains, (2) 3,500 miles of dams, roads and footpaths, and (3) 2,176 miles of sea and river defence.
The Venn Commission also reported that “to build the coastal plantation alone, a value of 100,000,000 tons of earth had to be moved by the hands of African slaves “(without machinery).
Does Dr. Death want to share the truth with the Nation? Does he want to tell them Indians were paid to work as Indentured Servants and had contracts? Does he want to tell them they received free villages while Africans were given no land and had to buy theirs?
In the end, Dr. Death tries his old racist tricks to poison the mind of our Nation. He states Dr. Thomas is a Founding member of ACDA. So now, in his subliminal messages, Thomas and ACDA are racists. This is the typical trick of racial entrepreneurs: call someone else a “racist” to hide the fact that you are a deep genetic racist.
Dr. Death reminds me of “Fishhooks” McCarthy, a famous Democratic leader on the Lower East Side and right-hand man to Al Smith.
“Fishhooks,” the story goes, was devout.  So devout that every morning on his way to Tammany Hall to do his political work, he stopped into St. James Church on Oliver Street in downtown Manhattan, fell on his knees, and whispered the same simple prayer: “O, Lord, give me health and strength.  We’ll steal the rest.
Dr. Death alias Sultan Mohamad is our new “Fishhooks” McCarthy.
In closing, racial entrepreneurs like Sultan Mohamed have a very clear agenda. They believe their race is superior to the African race. His agenda is one of indifference to Africans. And as Elie Wiesel , the Holocaust survivor who lost his mother, father and smaller sister during the evils of Hitler, in his speech at the White House on April 12, 1999  said,
“Of course, indifference can be tempting — more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbour is of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction. In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative”.
Hopefully, Sultan Mohamed will do Guyana good and fall or perish on his/her sword of hate and racism.
Eric Phillips

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