Since time immemorial some outstanding figures in the family of humankind have been putting their personal welfare – even their lives, in the line of fire – literally and figuratively, for the benefit of the general good, while there are yet others who trample on the rights of others, including leaders who engage in programmes against their own people, to advance their self-serving interests.

Within the Guyana landscape many tried to end the scourge of slavery in various ways. The slaves through rebellions, with some paying the ultimate price, and the various monuments around the country do not even begin to tell the stories, many unrecorded, of the desperate courage of men and women who refused to vitiate their humanity to bestiality.

Within the Guyana landscape many tried to end the scourge of slavery in various ways. The slaves through rebellions, with some paying the ultimate price, and the various monuments around the country do not even begin to tell the stories, many unrecorded, of the desperate courage of men and women who refused to vitiate their humanity to bestiality

It is through a continuum of sacrifices by heroic antecedents of the Guyanese people that this country finally achieved Independence from Great Britain which, sadly, did not confer real freedom to the newly-birthed Guyanese nation, because this country was still held captive to a dictatorship, which refused to relinquish their stranglehold on the fledgling nation, with many of the freedom fighters locked up in jails, even while the instruments of freedom were being conferred to the dictator.
However, the greatest freedom fighter Guyana has ever known, who strategised and led the fight for freedom against colonization, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, along with a team of loyal and committed patriots including current President Donald Ramotar, continued relentlessly to pursue true democracy whereby the peoples of this land could truly celebrate their national identity through cultural diversity on once common path to peace, progress and prosperity.
The journey was rugged and the way was filled with the encumbrances of violence meted out to the pathbreakers, who sometimes paid with their lives to create a way forward for a pathway on which their descendants could tread with the confidence of a brighter future ahead – if they succeeded.
And succeed they did, but the martyrs are strewn like flowers on that path that led to the lives steeped in democratic freedoms that the current and future generations of Guyanese are enjoying.
June-July marks the season of Guyanese martyrdom.
It was during this season that 17-yr-old Jagan Ramessar and father of five, Parmanand Bholanauth, were brutally shot and left to bleed to death when they tried to prevent the hijacking of ballot boxes by members of the Guyana Defence Force during elections of 1973; a brutal murder that is still being defended by then high-ranking officer in the GDF and Burnham’s security advisor, and current PNC presidential candidate, David Granger, who is adding insult to injury by placing the blame on the victims for their own gruesome and unnecessary murder.
Young and charismatic leader of the Working People’s Alliance, Dr. Walter Rodney, also paid the ultimate price for opposing the dictatorship, with the Guyana Defence Force once more being accused of his murder; and he was merely one of many others, including peaceful Catholic Standard photographer, who was merely taking out photographs, yet was ran down and bayoneted in full public view.
It was in June of 1948 that five sugar workers on the Enmore Estate sacrificed their lives in pursuit of humane working conditions in the industry, which precipitated even greater efforts on the part of an already charged young Dr. Cheddi Jagan on a lifelong course to pursue justice and equity to the overburdened and abused working class people of then British Guiana.

Throughout the decades of much injustice and suffering meted out to him and his supporters he continued unswervingly to place his beloved country and people in a comfort zone that would guarantee a posterity of promise of unity in this nation’s cultural diversity, which would become bridges to strengthen a pathway to progress for the nation, instead of chasms that could lead to a nation forever divided. And he pursued this dream of freedom and unity in diversity all his life. What he achieved in the early 1950’s is once again fructifying, despite the frantic efforts of those who want to once more divide the people so that they can rule the land with an iron fist.
The current administration is succeeding in bringing the Guyanese nation together in shared efforts at nation-building, where everyone is a participant in joint community initiatives, which is slowly but surely melding the Guyanese people into a nation with one common objective – the pursuit of peace, progress and prosperity for all, collectively as a Guyanese nation.
But in the various engagements to reach this objective the peoples of this land must never forget to honour those who have made these achievements possible – the martyrs of Guyana who sacrificed their own welfare and sometimes their lives to carve this pathway to a brighter future for Guyana and the Guyanese people.