Reparatory justice for Guyanese for crimes against humanity

Sep 19, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor
After writing so many nasty anti African letters and being exposed by me, the propaganda machine called the Guyana Times are now in the defence by attack mode to further attempt to confuse their targeted ethnic constituency by misrepresenting facts. However, this barrage still will not and does not change the facts.
Fact number one
The Guyana Reparations Committee is seeking land as reparatory justice for “crimes against humanity” as supported by International law and the precedent the Guyana Government has set by providing lands for reparatory justice through the Amerindian Act of 2006. Any competent or honest lawyer would recognize this precedent as well as international law. Three Amerindian groups received lands as reparatory justice even though they came here 100 to 200 years after Africans. None of the three were here before the 1763 Cuffy rebellion.
The propaganda machine still attempt to confuse the public and especially their ethnic constituency by purposefully mixing up “ancestral lands” with lands for reparatory justice. Ancestral lands are lands bought by FREED Africans beginning with the Village movement and the Guyana Reparations Committee is not addressing ancestral lands. So, point one; ancestral lands and lands for reparatory justice are not the same and that you cannot change by willful propaganda.
Fact number two.
The Village movement was the greatest entrepreneurial initiative in any post slavery society and it was done by freed Africans in Guyana. It was not a British Initiative as one of the propagandists claims. In a recent letter, a certain propagandist continues to claim the Village Movement was not African entrepreneurship but a con job by the British. He wrote “After slavery ended, the planters wanted to get rid of their estates that were losing money. Recognizing that Africans had some cash saved during the apprentice period, the planters encouraged the ex-slaves to buy the estates or villages. This is not to put down Africans, but to show how the planters “duped” them into buying estates that the planters wanted to get rid of”.(end of quote). Yet, the history books tell a different story from the propagandist’s claim.
“The freed Africans saved money from the pittance they were given for overtime work after they had to work free for 45 hours before obtaining overtime. Within twelve years of the first purchase in 1839, freed Africans asserted their independence in a dramatic way. Of a total African population of 82,000 in British Guiana (Guyana), over 42,000 lived in the villages they had bought and for which they had established their own local government. They had acquired at the cost of over one million dollars, (25) twenty five communal villages and over 7,000 freehold properties in proprietary villages. This figure refers to the cost of the land. Estimating the average cost of a cottage at seventy dollars, the amount spent on hosing was nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. Governor Barclay places the improvements to the land at half a million dollars. So that altogether the Africans had spent nearly two and a quarter million dollars in an effort to obtain their economic freedom from the planters”. (end of quote)
Fact number three
The Guyana Reparations Committee is claiming lands for reparatory justice for crimes against humanity as defined by the International Court of Justice. I cannot fathom how indentured servants who were contracted and paid can claim reparations for “crimes against humanity”.
It is not strange that the propagandist band at the “beacon of untruth” wants to label me a racist for correcting history and for seeking justice for African descendants. I can live with that. It’s a common ploy used by Indians in Guyana, as every time an African seeks justice he or she is called a racist. But their partner in racial propaganda , Jagdeo, who was a co-conspirator involved in the deaths of 400 Africans with drug lord, Roger Khan and who gave almost all of the all the contracts, licenses , jobs , lands , weapons and government subsidies to Indians , isn’t a racist.
Finally, it was the Venn Commission which was done by the British and not Eric Phillips which stated 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 labor forces.
All the plantations now turned villages and cities were built by unpaid African labor. 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 defense.
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). Can the band indicate how Indentured Indians cleared 3 times the amount of land that Africans did. By all logic, that would be that Indians cleared 45,000 square miles. This would mean Africans and Indians cleared 70,000 square miles.80% of Guyana is forested today.
Perhaps another columnist at the ‘beacon of truth” Sase Singh, will quietly mention that 80% of Guyana is 66, 400 square miles. Let’s see. Africans cleared 15,000 square miles. Guyana has 66,400 square miles forested today. This is a total of 81,400 square miles and Guyana is 83,000 square miles. If Indians cleared 45,000 square miles as you have stated with your “fake news”, then Guyana is 126,000 plus square miles.
Eric Phillips

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