Cold Cases and the Hard Facts – Rhetorical Echoes of the Past

Mar 19, 2015 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Yesterday, Wednesday March 18, 2015, as the body of political activist Courtney Crum-Ewing was lowered into the ground, with it went the symbolism of how far we as a nation have sunk, not to mention the price that citizens must be willing to pay if they speak out against perceived injustice.
Freedom of expression was dealt a gut-wrenching blow. The name Courtney Crum-Ewing became another in the list of Guyanese who have paid the ultimate price for putting the spotlight on the powers that be.
In January 2006 when journalist Ronald Waddell, although an active member of the People’s National Congress met a similar demise, based on his voiced criticism of what he believed was government-sponsored genocide, on his talk show. Following his death, the Guyana Government as well as the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuur condemned the assassination and called for a full investigation into the crime.
In similar vein, the Government has called for a full no-holds barred investigation into Courtney’s death.  Incidentally, let us not, due to the passage of time, forget the 1979 senseless slaying of the British Jesuit priest and secondary school teacher Father Bernard Darke.  He was murdered as he took photos of a demonstration in Georgetown.  A gang of supporters of the Forbes Burnham Government had attacked demonstrators from the Working People’s Alliance and then turned on bystanders, of whom Father Darke was one.
Springing to mind with equal rapidity and accompanying shrouded uncertainty is the case of the then Education Minister Vincent Teekah who was assassinated on the night of October 24, 1979. At his funeral, over his dead body Prime Minister Forbes Burnham promised to get the persons or persons involved. No inquest or investigation was held, surrounding circumstances never gelled and no killer was sought or ever caught.
The toxic rhetoric of the past is now serving to unleash the fury of the people who feel that with election so imminent, even scarier conspiracy may be underfoot.
Yes, here we are now in worse times, and to pen the words of the great American writer and political activist Eldridge Cleaver, “history could pass for a scarlet text, its jot and title graven red in human blood”.  The writer further coined another saying, “if you are not part of the solution; you are part of the problem”.
All civic-minded citizens should not only ponder on the latter-mentioned statement, but it should serve as the motivatory agent for each and everyone to decide their reformative move and the way forward. At this juncture I do not wish to change roles and to now be seen as a soothsayer, a psychic, a see-far, clairvoyant, or the harbinger of doom, but I wish to boldly affirm that the death of Courtney Crum-Ewing will join the ranks and gain posterity among the annals of unsolved high profile assassinations in Guyana.
It would be sheer folly bordering on unbridled insanity for the people of Guyana to believe that the recent slaying of Courtney Crum–Ewing would be solved and the perpetrators brought to justice. Case closed! Next chapter!  Shame! Shame! Shame!
Albert Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  The handling of past situations speaks volumes, as the dead are unable to speak for themselves. However the people of Guyana must not be deterred by the rhetoric that they have heard one more time too often.
What does this all mean in this great period of Guyanese history?
Basically translated or explained, it simply means that the struggle must continue and that the people must stay together and maintain unity.  In Biblical times when the Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery, his favourite recipe for so doing was to keep the slaves fighting among themselves. When the slaves were united, that was the beginning of their getting out of slavery.
According to Frantz Fanon in his book ‘Wretched of the Earth’ “every generation must out of relative obscurity, discover its own destiny and betray or fulfill it in relative opacity”.
If in Guyana previous generations have been neglectful, errant or just plain indifferent, then such behaviours should not be allowed to continue.  The toll has sounded, the die has been cast and the dirge played. As a people on the threshold of a new day and a new dawn, it behooves us all to accept (hard though it is) and overcome the cold hard facts, the heartless acts, and despite the buried pain, toil towards a common gain.
The work of our fallen brother must go on. That is the greatest tribute that we can pay him.   Allow time to serve as the Great Equalizer and the Mysterious Sleuth permitting lips that were previously sealed to gradually start the truth to reveal.  Have no fear and shed no tear fellow comrades, some cold cases have been known to become warm with the passage of years.
So to our national hero: Rest in peace. The labourer’s task is o’er. The struggle will continue.
Yvonne Sam

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