Ryhaan Shah responds to Freddie Kissoon

Oct 09, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Kaieteur News – I am hereby replying to Freddie Kissoon’s attempt to smear me as a “racist” in his “Kaieteur News” column of October 8, 2020.
Let me say that I am extremely tired of Guyana and that the likes of Kissoon is allowed by a news outlet to say whatever he likes without any of the responsibility that comes with the freedom of speech granted him by a democracy. It is very evident that democracy cannot guarantee civil discourse.
I am very proud of my heritage, my ethnicity and my culture, as Kissoon points out. My right to all of it is enshrined in the Guyana Constitution and the UN Human Rights Charter.
Asserting those rights at moments when you and your family are under attack for your ethnicity is not only instinctual to survival but is just and necessary and in no way stands in contradiction to my moral and principled sense of being which has been instilled in me by my religion, culture, and my familial relationships.
Oppression must be resisted along the lines on which it is being imposed and world history continues to witness the struggles of peoples who stand courageously for their race, culture, or beliefs against oppressors.
By Kissoon’s simple-minded logic, the protestors around the world in the “Black Lives Matter” movement are all racists since they are allowing their race to determine how they see the world.
Kissoon’s column was written to criticise an African Guyanese woman who had written to justify the recent attempts to rig the March general election. He threw my name into the mix gratuitously to make himself, I suppose, an equal opportunity basher who likes to spew his particular brand of miasma whenever presented with a chance no matter how flimsy and out of context it might be.

Sincerely,
Ryhaan Shah

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