‘The truth is that such events have already happened in this country on more than one occasion. They continue to happen. LGBT people have been the subjects of verbal and physical assaults in Guyana from time immemorial.’

By Subraj Singh
The mass murder of 50 members of the American LGBT community and their allies at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida last weekend was caused by gunshots that have now reverberated around the entire world.

The conversation, like a many headed hydra, has grown and expanded to include many different facets of thought and conversation that are far removed from the crime and what it really signifies.
Of course, there are similarities in the conversations that people are having. Supporters and advocates of LGBT rights are united in their outpouring of grief and their justifiable fury at the fact that they have lost loved ones, while those who oppose the LGBT cause come together to spew hate and condemn the innocent people who have lost their lives.
The conversation is as prevalent in Guyana, because the conversation is significant to Guyana, as evidenced by the expressions of sympathy that have been flooding social media since the incident occurred. Social media, it should be noted, is as relevant a forum of discussion as the group of men talking on the streets or public servants who conduct the same discussion in their offices.
Social media reflects the voices of many people, including the crucial youth demographic of our country, and their voices shout out words, philosophies, ideas and opinions that are more than worthy of analysis. The conversation on the Orlando shootings on popular social media platform,
Facebook, for example, has raised several poignant questions that force many Guyanese to see their reactions to homophobia in America, while not being cognizant of the homophobia that is still very much prevalent in Guyana. Among these questions, includes the vital one, highlighted by Navina Paul, a young University of Guyana School of Medicine student on social media, which serves as a summation of all the other points and questions that we, as a nation, need to ask ourselves: how would we, the Guyanese people, react if an event similar to the one that took place in Orlando happened here in Guyana?

The truth is that such events have already happened in this country on more than one occasion. They continue to happen. LGBT people have been the subjects of verbal and physical assaults in

Guyana from time immemorial.
In the not so recent past, there have been spates of murders, particularly of people who identify as being transgender. About two years ago, a jilted man brutally murdered two members of the Guyanese LGBT community, Tyra Banks and Jada, in the middle of the street. Last year, another member of the community, Noel Luther, 20, was gunned down. Tiffany Holder and Nandkumar Purnwassie are other examples of people within the LGBT community who have been murdered in Guyana.
Yet, while the shootings in Orlando is a tragic event, one has to ponder on why many so Guyanese have failed to express in the ways they are currently doing for all the LGBT people of Guyanese nationality who have been killed over the years.
Perhaps the answer is obvious and the loss of 50 lives in one night is a somber enough representation of homophobic hate that has jolted the Guyanese society into recognizing and realizing the horrors that can be meted out to LGBT persons.
However, there is also a second, more morbid and controversial school of thought; one which caters to the notion of Guyanese refusing to acknowledge the death of their own because of a sort of devaluing of everything Guyanese in favour of what is foreign and “trending.”
One hopes that the years of silence that now seem to have been broken are not merely because of a superficial expectation to grieve, but rather is expressive of genuine rage and sorrow at the loss of many innocent lives. Our original question of how Guyanese would [now] react to the deaths of LGBT persons in their country is one, therefore, that cannot be answered right away.
The answer, meant to unearth whether the Orlando shootings has really made people in our country more sympathetic to the LGBT cause, will be found in the moments after now, after the attack, in the ways in which people treat the LGBT community.
Would the physical and verbal attacks against gay people in the streets stop? Would homophobic Christians recognize their error in dictating how other people should lead their lives? Would more people attend SASOD’s Film Festival in an attempt to learn more about LGBT persons?
Would the discriminatory laws be permanently removed from our legal system? Would a gay person be allowed to walk freely around Georgetown without having to fear condemnation? If these things are allowed, if the Guyanese people allow them to happen, then we would know that Orlando has definitely triggered some sort of change in our own country. Until then, we continue to hope.

The situation in Orlando also brought to the fore other areas of concern for Guyana. Mental health, for example, is something that features very prominently in the whole situation. With one of the highest suicide rates in the world, an archaic manner of approaching mental health and a lack of overall resources, it is obvious that Guyana is already in very dire straits. At the time of writing, there is speculation that the gunman in the Orlando shooting may have been gay himself and that his murder spree may have been a symptom of his struggle with his sexuality, perhaps one where he projected his own sexual identity on to the people he murdered. Speculation aside, however, there is no doubt that struggles with sexuality fall into the category of mental health issues, and one has to ask whether that struggle like depression, anxiety and so many others fall into the category of illnesses that are not recognized for what they are by many Guyanese and is therefore not given the serious attention it requires. As a nation, we must ask ourselves what this means for the wellbeing of our country’s people. The link between mental health and massacres of all kinds is one that has become clearer and clearer over the years and this should make the necessity of treating mental illnesses a priority in order to benefit society and the country as a whole, while also being beneficial on an individualistic level for the people who suffer from such mental health disorders. Indeed, for this country to move forward with a healthy, stable populace, mental health needs to be a key focus point for the current administration.
Two other relevant conversations that are being fiercely debated in the wake of Orlando’s tragedy are those related to gun laws and religion, with the ease of the gunman’s ability to procure the gun he used in the massacre and his religion, as a Muslim with affiliations to ISIS, being points of contention. These are both relevant to Guyana. With the first, the connection is obvious. Guyana is known for its high rate of gun-related crimes; something which, in fact, has, in recent years, become a bit of a norm. Does Guyana have a gun problem? The answer is yes. One would look to the government for answers and solutions, but if the crime rate remains the same, if over a hundred improvised weapons, scores of cell phones, razor blades and lighters can manage to go undiscovered in the Camp Street prison, the country’s main prison, for so long then it is not likely people to expect illegal guns and ammunition across all of Guyana to be found and confiscated, with the owners being charged and tried.
In Guyana, Islam has always had a rocky relationship with homosexuals. The Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG), as an example, earlier this year denounced LGBT-themed postage stamps produced by the United Nations, claiming that such an act served to promote a way life of life that is detrimental to their beliefs. However, in the wake of the Orlando tragedy, Muslims have been coming forward with sympathies and prayers for the LGBT community. If significant only because of the CIOG’s recent attacks on the community and because of the Orlando shootings, people like Kashir and Scheherazade Khan must be taken note of. As Muslims, they have partnered with the Society Against Sexual Orientation and Discrimination and invited the public to partake in Iftar (the evening meal used to end days of fasting in the month of Ramadan) in remembrance of those who died in the Orlando shooting. The importance of such a move may be lost to some, but to others it is a reminder that they are not alone in the fight for the LGBT cause and that even here in Guyana, there are people who will stand for what is right.