Dear Editor,
FUNDAMENTAL rights and freedoms are held sacred equally as their corresponding responsibilities. Response is made to the Indian Arrival/Action Committee’s (IAC) view that there exists an interest on my part to silence or intimidate the body.The IAC’s right to freedom of expression in questioning the President’s declared intent to establish a “Land Commission” to regularise African ancestral/communal lands vis a vis what it means for the legally constituted Lands and Surveys Commission was never questioned. What is being questioned, and deservedly so, is the use of this premise to front what is clearly an expressed denial to Africans of the universal human right to own property, which in this instance was bought and paid for by their ancestors in the post-slavery Village Movement era.

You cannot fool persons by seeking to wield and hide behind the false claim that reparation talks between CARICOM and European countries have something to do with the issue of regularising lands, which also is a function of the State. Any effort to bring ancestral lands in line with 21st century State record keeping/accounting, which will also make known ownership, is appropriate and welcome.

It also avoids the illegitimate land grabbing tendency, as happened in Sparendaam (Pardoville II) and elsewhere, and continues today with consequences of creating injurious conflicts.

In exercising the right to free speech and freedom of association, the IAC, in its letter, did send out a dog whistle to Indians that ‘they must run, run, go tell every Indian the [evil] blacks are coming for their lands, so let us come together and resist this force”, when such has no basis in fact, pursuit, or intent.

And here is where this group continues to exercise fundamental rights and freedoms to engage in conduct designed to deny the bringing about of justice, equity and fair play in the system, which would ensure harmony and peaceful co-existence between and among the races.

Were the body interested in such pursuit, the falsification of the publicly and widely known case/focus of reparations would not have been applied. And where it claims that Indians are fearful their lands would be taken away, given the publicly well-known position advanced on the ancestral lands issue and what the President also clearly stated, there is a responsibility on the part of the IAC to so educate and empower its constituents with the facts.
Evidently, to do so would compromise what the organisation has set out to achieve.

There is no interest in silencing and/or intimidating the body; because organisations, though led by bigots, also enjoy the right to exist and be heard. Correspondingly, those who desire a society where all are treated equally with dignity and respect will expose such operatives. Persons, when confronted and exposed, may seek to deny the evidence by referring to such as “baseless attacks” or “false assertions”, but no choice exists in playing villain and victim at the same time.
Regards,
LINCOLN LEWIS