– “Roger Khan is a hero” – so say many persons whom I interviewed
The PNCR and its satellites and acolytes have taken to the streets again – sending terror into the hearts of Indo-Guyanese, of many members of the Guyana Police Force and their families, of the business community, and of decent Guyanese of every ethnic extraction who have been the victims of bandits, and of the PNC’s ‘slow fiah, more fiah” strategy intended to wrest power at any cost.

The members of the “resistance movement” need to survive, and most of them are not gainfully employed, preferring to wrest the wherewithal for their living with the force of the gun rather than from the sweat of their brow, despite the many opportunities currently prevailing through the several projects and systems implemented by the Government and other entities, and a steadily-accelerating construction boom that has taken dynamic dimensions through the Government’s housing programme and the extant entrepreneurial adventurism that has been facilitated by the Government’s free-market policy and the investment and divestment paradigm created by the liberation of the economy.

The nexus between the PNC and the bandits have been made evident many times – when they draped the coffin of notorious thief and murderer, Linden (Blackie) London with the flag of Guyana – the symbol of our nation’s honour; and their open championing over the years of thieves, rapists and murderers, without giving a thought for the innocent persons, including innocent babies and young women, slain and despoiled by these predators, of those police officers who refused to respond to the “kith and kin” call wantonly slain, with their families and the nation left bereft and traumatised.

In the wake of the orchestrated jail-break and the formation of the Buxton and Agricola gangs, innocent persons were being slain like flies all across the country.

Multi-murders were committed with impunity – of a group of friends having a drink in a bar, of a family at a wedding or funeral, of persons merely walking on the street, shot at random by gunmen who easily escaped because the law-enforcement officers were themselves terrified, because members of the police force were specially targeted.

Almost every time the PNCR and/or its satellites marched, large sections of the city went up in flames, with business houses looted, ordinary workers and schoolchildren robbed, injured and sexually-molested in open vies, even at the parks.

One PNC member and strident talk-show host was caught on camera with a bottle of gas while the city was burning.

Terror stalked the land – because no-one was spared. A poor man going fishing at 4:00 h (a.m.) to augment the family income with his 8-yr-old son was slaughtered.

Sugar workers were killed in backdams. Even their own “kith and kin” who would not join them – entire families, such as the Chesters in Buxton, were targeted.

Homes were burnt with entire families inside. The few brave policemen who stood up to the gangs were slaughtered one by one.

No-one could transit the East Coast corridor without fear of attack. A ten-year-old Canadian girl was visiting Guyana for the first time with her Corentyne-born parents when marauding gangs from Buxton stopped their car, looted their valuables, then chopped them up. The little girl’s thigh was chopped to the bone.

Dev Sharma and his wife Maria were a young professional couple with a son and a daughter who were the apples of their eyes.

I knew the unrelenting sacrifices and the unremitting struggle that Dev and Maria had made to reach the heights they did.

While others chased the American dream they chased the Guyanese dream – and when they bought their own home they deliberately chose to live in Agricola – because they believed in the Guyanese people.

Within months their home was invaded and robbed, Dev’s wife was shot, and he was kidnapped and taken to Buxton, from where he fortuitously escaped.

Today the traumatised couple have taken their children and fled to America, leaving all they had painstakingly acquired to build a new life in an alien land.

And the Government was helpless, because the police force was crippled by fear (and corruption at some levels). They kept the gates of police stations locked at many locations, because the bandits often willfully shot police to death inside of the police stations.

Then the bodies of the bandits started turning up. Gun battles were being waged in the streets, in houses located in respectable communities where the bandits were hiding out.

Decent citizens cautiously started venturing out once more. The country slowly, painfully returned to a semblance of normalcy.

But the PNC, which had been notably silent when these atrocities were being committed, started clamouring about a “phantom squad” killing innocent young men, even these “innocent” young men had been wanted for some of the most heinous crimes known to mankind: and for the resignation of Home Affairs Minister Gajraj.

Gajraj resigned, but the clamour continues, especially now with the trial of Roger Khan.

Roger Khan is a self-admitted drug lord, and according to him, the bandits, in their rampage, had attacked several of his people, so he probably retaliated, to the benefit of the Guyanese nation and the relief of the Government.

In the USA, which is currently trying Roger Khan, law-enforcement agencies have been known to approve, even encourage and facilitate gangland wars, because the eradication of one gang by the other is much to be desired, especially if the pursuits of the victorious gang, while reprehensible, are not as catastrophic to the nation as the pursuits of those vanquished, and may even have helped to stabilise the security of the nation to manageable proportions.

I am not speculating whether any member of the Government was aware of Khan’s activities, because his name surfaced much later.

What I know is that many Guyanese, including magistrate Hawke and his wife, on whom robbery and worse atrocities were visited, would have felt a sense of vindication if someone from somewhere had caught those bandits, in whatever ways possible.

There was a PNCR activist, vociferous and strident against “police brutality, whose vehicle broke down on the Agricola public road. She was robbed and gunned down by some of the same persons whom she had so energetically championed.

No-one has to criminalise PNC supporters. They have done it themselves, because while their own children are studying in universities abroad, and living luxurious lifestyles, they are encouraging the young children of their supporters to go on the streets and rampage so that they can get into the corridors of power once more.

The PNCR has gone on the rampage once more – and fear again stalks the land, because their history of devastating this country has traumatised this nation.

My friend Dale Andrews wrote recently that he was once more feeling safe to venture into Buxton.

But the PNCR would not let this nation have peace, and the sad thing is that many of their supporters are decent-minded persons who do not hate the persons to whom they cause so much hurt, and in whom they drive such fear with their street marches and related activities.

Heston Bostwick has protected me at the risk of his own safety, against those whom the PNC would consider his “kith and kin”, and I know that he would come to my rescue anytime I call on him, more than I can say for my own brothers.

Yet Indians are fearful of him and call him “terrorist”, although I can say with conviction that Bostwick is not a racist. We have done community-development activities together and he treats me as a sister. I hold him in great affection and I regret that he is being linked to nefarious activities.

When I was recruiting unemployed young men from Agricola for a skills-development programme with entrepreneurs, my friend Michael, who was helping me, took me to a young man who was making cabinets under a house.

He refused to join the programme because it was Government-driven and later became a primary member of one of the most notorious criminal gangs in Guyana.

Today Michael is head of the construction section of one of the companies which had helped spearhead the programme and the young cabinet-maker became a violent criminal who was shot dead by the joint services.

But this is the legacy of the PNC – this destruction of all the worthwhile things in this nation – most of all the trust that Guyanese have for each other.

And it is against this background that a self-confessed drug baron like Roger Khan is being hailed as hero.