Hinds’ Sight by Dr. David Hinds – Our Independence Failings

–State violence and political decay

I CONTINUE to believe that we in the Caribbean have made tremendously positive contributions to world civilization. From the bondage of slavery, through indentureship and colonization, to the contemporary independence era, our people have made their mark on the world, always defying the odds and surviving.Given our history of bondage and our survival and overcoming of its gross inhumanity, we constantly have something to tell the world about human rights and human dignity. And we have done so in our art, our music, our dance, our written word, our cricket, our intellectual production, and our advocacy on behalf of righteousness. Ours has been a critique of the worst in the human experience, constantly reminding the world of its obligation to equality, justice and fairness.

But there are aspects of our recent experience that fly in the face of that tradition. Our Independence, which is 50 years old this year, has not always held to the principles which have historically shaped our worldview.

There has been a sort of contradiction between our soul and our politics — perhaps hypocrisy. In many respects, we have mimicked the very political culture we fought so valiantly against and ultimately overcame. Many have correctly pointed to the freedom initiatives taken in our politics and economics — our struggles to turn plantations into nations. We correctly laud our maximum leaders for showing the way, for standing up for us — vision flowed aplenty.

But we have to be honest to ourselves about one profound thing: In the process, we devoured one another. The post-colonial or independence state, replete with all the characteristics of colonial domination, has been the antithesis of Independence. We have failed miserably in the area of human rights for our weak, our powerless, our sufferers and those who dared to stand with them. We in the Caribbean never learned how to deal with dissent in our politics.

We stood with our African brethren against racial apartheid while we practised a vicious political and social apartheid at home. Our reach for education as liberation produced some of the best minds in the world, but we marginalised and killed those very minds in the name of the party and the state. We marched with workers in 1962 and 1966, but turned the guns of the state on them in 1963 and 1967.

This past week has been revealing for us here in Guyana. After six long years, those who have been suspected of terrorising Freddie Kissoon have been apprehended, and will face the law. Freddie represents dissent. He continues to speak up for the defenceless, and for that he has been subjected to viciousness of the state. I was walking with Freddie and others in the vicinity of our Parliament Buildings one night four years ago when he was physically attacked by cowardly men. They would have killed him if we were not there.

In our Guyana, such attacks — to my mind — could not be carried out without the knowledge and perhaps direction of those who run the state.

We have also learned that new suspects are being questioned about Courtney Crum-Ewing’s murder. This young man was gunned down while urging citizens to vote. The political directorate and the police never seemed interested in solving the crime.

The guns of the state are deadly, but the cover-ups which follow the crime are sickening; and for me, they are as dangerous as the gunmen. Courtney’s parents have been crying for justice, often in the wilderness it seems. How could law enforcement have been in the dark about who the suspects were/are in both the Kissoon and Crum-Ewing cases when every other person on the street knew the story?

And finally they killed him. I remember those words 36 years later. They had killed Walter Rodney at 8 pm on June 13, 1980 on a Friday night. I have heard many well-meaning and some not so well-meaning say that Rodney’s WPA declined after his assassination.

In their haste to talk cheap politics, they miss something fundamental: Guyana declined after Rodney’s death. The governments since 1980, all of them, have assassinated Rodney even after his death by carrying out what Elder Eusi Kwayana calls “assassination of the evidence.” Some government officials have trivialised the act, and in the process diminished Rodney in the eyes of many Guyanese. Some justify the murder by saying he was trying to overthrow the government, he was causing trouble.

In closing, let me say the following: Any society that condones and justifies state violence is a decaying society. Such political behaviour is unbecoming of a people who have been victims of state violence under Slavery, Indentureship and Colonialism. Let us, as a society, turn our face away from such behaviour and recover the collective dignity we brought to our Independence.

(More of Dr. Hinds’ writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics, and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com)

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