‘I was physically brutalised because of my politics’
– Burnham denied him a job in Guyana because he wrote for the ‘Mirror’ newspaper and not ‘New Nation’

THE Commission of Inquiry into the death of renown Guyanese scholar, Dr. Walter Rodney continues to hear of the horrific and frightening political climate which pervaded Guyana during the PNC’s rule, where citizens were not only denied the basic human and constitutional rights but were inflicted with severe violence when they sought to enjoy and exercise those rights.

The Commission yesterday heard from Reverend Reuben Gilbert, who said his friendship with Dr. Rodney, the co-founder of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), proved costly especially in the 1970s.

Reuben told the COI that had he not leave his home one night; he would have been executed by the youth arm of the People’s National Congress (PNC), known as the Young Socialist Movement (YSM).
Gilbert, 78, is the fourth witness to be called in the COI which was ordered by President Donald Ramotar last February 6 to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of the former historian/politician.
He was led during his testimony by Lawyer Latchmie Rahamat, before the Commissioners – Sir Richard Cheltenham, Jacqueline Samuels-Brown and Seenath Jairam – in the Supreme Court Law Library in Georgetown.
Gilbert maintained that he had never been a member of the WPA but supported Rodney because they had become friends. As such, the most he did was attend political meetings that were held by the WPA.
Speaking about the time he was ‘about to be killed’ by the YSM, Gilbert recalled that sometime in 1980, he was driving home when he saw a neighbour, James Daniels, flagging him down. The neighbour told him that the ‘YSM hit men’ of the PNC were going to come to his home that night to kill him. The neighbour further informed him that the plan of the YSM was to kill him and then tell authorities that he had a gun stored in his guitar case.
According to Gilbert, he called his brother Neville Gilbert, who was a member of the PNC, and asked him to sleep over at his (Reuben’s) house that night. Without informing his brother of anything he knew, Gilbert said he drove his car to the University of Guyana (UG) Campus and slept there for the night.
The next morning when he arrived home, his brother was baffled and wanted to know why members of the YSM went to the house looking for him. This was when Neville Gilbert knew that his brother was about to be killed.
This took place about two or three months before Rodney was killed, Gilbert said, and he subsequently left Guyana in order to save his life.
On another occasion, about three days following Rodney’s death, he recalled that three men went up to him at Robb and Wellington Streets and one grabbed him and threw him into a van. Gilbert said the three were part of the notorious ‘Death Squad,’ a unit of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) that was known to be working in conjunction with the PNC to intimidate anyone who was in Opposition to the ruling party.
Gilbert said he was taken from Robb and Wellington Streets to Parliament Building, then to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and then to the East La Penitence Police Station. During his time in the van, he remembers one of the men telling him: “Y’all boss dead now. We gon soon get rid of all of you.”
During this ordeal, Gilbert recalled that he was severely beaten and hit to his head several times and was being forced to give a statement. He also had to go without food and water for a considerable time and had to endure blindfolding.
Gilbert said he had a feeling that they wanted to charge him for possession of arms so he stood his ground and refused to give the statement. It was a cleaner lady at the East La Penitence Police Station who helped him out by making a call to Freedom House, the PPP’s headquarters. Gilbert said he is unsure if President Donald Ramotar, who was working at Freedom House at the time, was the one who took the call and sent a lawyer to the station.
Gilbert said he was eventually released but was threatened that he would be killed if they had reason to pick him up again.

BURNHAM DENIED HIM A JOB
Gilbert also testified about the time when he returned to Guyana. In 1969 after spending years in the United States and the Caribbean, he was denied employment even though he had studied and received his post-graduate qualifications.
When he enquired as to ‘why’ he was denied employment, no less a person than Prime Minister Forbes Burnham told him that it was because of his politics.
Reuben told the COI he first gained employment at the Ministry of Economic Development but before the end of the first month, he received a letter of dismissal that came from the Office of the President, and ultimately from Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. No one would tell him why he was dismissed and he was not even permitted to meet with the Permanent Secretary.
Eventually, though, he was told by the Permanent Secretary that he was considered a “security risk.” He then tried every effort to meet Mr. Burnham and eventually succeeded. He recalled Burnham asking him: “What is your politics comrade? Why didn’t you put your article in the New Nation?” The New Nation was the PNC organ (newspaper).
After Gilbert returned to Guyana, he had written an article titled, ‘Unselfish hands promote the nation’ which was published in the Mirror newspaper (the PPP organ). It contained details of the conditions he observed when he returned to Guyana. “It was not the Guyana I left and I was very concerned,” he said. Burnham told him he would hear from him but he never did.
Gilbert then tried contacting the then Leader of the Opposition, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, who then helped him to secure a teaching job at the Covent Garden Secondary School in 1971. Eventually, though, Gilbert received a letter sending him to a school at the Venezuelan Border but he couldn’t go because he had a wife and two young children. He had to resort to hire car work.

PREMONITION
Gilbert told the COI that about three days before Rodney died, he had a strong intuition that he (Rodney) was going to be killed. He said he wanted to warn Rodney but hesitated. A force in him, however, kept pressing him to go to Rodney.
Without even knowing where Rodney’s office was at this time, Gilbert said he nevertheless ended up at the correct address and warned Rodney that he was going to be killed. “He looked at me and dropped his head. He asked me to tell him about any situation I may have known about. I didn’t know anything else. I left and three days later he was killed,” Reuben told the COI.
This premonition probably came about after Rodney’s last visit to Gilbert’s House. According to Gilbert, he could have sensed anxiety in Rodney who later told him that he was concerned about the survival of his wife and children.
Gilbert also recalled that on one occasion when he went to visit Rodney, Gregory Smith, the man later accused of murdering Rodney, was there to meet him as well.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)