THE month of July can be described as the month of martyrs. It was on July 14, 1979 that Father Bernard Darke, a British-born Jesuit priest and photographer for the Catholic Standard was stabbed to death by members of the House of Israel, a religious cult that was closely linked to the then People’s National Congress (PNC). Father Darke was at the time taking photographs of a massive demonstration organised by the political opposition against the then PNC regime. The killing took place on Brickdam, Georgetown, not far away from the Brickdam Police Station.

It was also on July 17,1964  that a young Michael Forde, aged 22, had his life snuffed out after he attempted to remove a bomb that was planted in the bottom flat of the PPP’s headquarters, Freedom House, which also housed the party’s bookshop, now renamed the Michael Forde Bookshop in his honour. Forde was at the time of his death a member of the youth arm of the PPP, the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO).

He was also an active participant in the historic Freedom March, organised by the PPP in 1964. Several other leading PPP members, including former First Lady Mrs. Janet Jagan, and the wife of the then Education Minister, Cedric Nunes were in the upper flat of the building when the explosive went off. So powerful was the device that it not only dismembered Michael Forde, but sent an old adjacent building crashing to the ground, and smashed glass windows of the nearby Metropole Cinema. The eastern part of Freedom House, and furniture in the building were also destroyed.

Incidentally, the bomb went off at a time when a meeting was in progress between the then Premier of British Guiana, Dr. Cheddi Jagan and leaders of the two main opposition parties, Forbes Burnham and Peter D’Aguiar of the PNC and the United Force (UF) respectively. The meeting was called by the premier to work on a solution to the volatile political situation that obtained in the country at the time.

Then there was the shooting to death of two men, then still in the prime of their lives, Jagan Ramessar and Bholanauth Parmanand, who were both shot to death on July 16, 1973 by members of the armed forces. They had gathered, along with several others, outside a polling place at No. 63 Village, Corentyne, as the ballot boxes were carted away from the polling place at the end of voting by members of the Disciplined Forces to some unknown destination. Those were the days when the counting of ballots was not done at the place of poll, as is the case today, but at a central location without the presence of polling/counting agents from the contesting parties. Indeed, it took robust and sustained representation by the PPP and other democratic forces that the then Desmond Hoyte administration agreed, after much arm-twisting by the Carter Centre to count the ballots at the place of poll in the October 1992 poll. Hoyte had earlier described such demand as ‘a logistical nightmare’.

Only last month we observed two significant martyrdoms: The shooting to death of five sugar workers, now regarded as the Enmore Martyrs on June 16, 1948 by colonial police and the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney on June 13, 1980, allegedly at the hands of individuals close to the then Burnham-led PNC regime.

All of these killings had one thing in common: A desire to stand up for freedom and justice, for which they all paid the ultimate price.

This is why it is so important that we do everything within our power to ensure that we do not have a return to such an ugly and sordid past. Sadly, there are still elements in our society who can see no evil in a return to that dark past, when the rights of Guyanese to elect a government of their choice were trampled upon with gross impunity. Thankfully, attempts to derail the democratic process once again in the March 2, 2020 National and Regional Elections by the APNU+AFC coalition were thwarted by the combined efforts of the PPP/C and other democratic forces in and out of Guyana.

It is incumbent upon us as a society to play our part to ensure that democracy and the rule of law are consolidated and fully entrenched. We owe this to the memory of our fallen heroes, and for this and future generations to come.