HERE is the list of people who comprise the executive committee of the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA): Larry Carryl (Engineer); Kerry Anne Cort-Kansinally (Data analyst-forestry); Michelle Kalamadeen (Remote sensing scientist – forestry); Cecil Morris (Disabilities activist); Natasha George (Data processor); Njuma Nelson (Chemist/water scientist); Marcelie Sears (Computer specialist); Teshanna Cox (Research officer); Troy Thomas (Snr. Lecturer, mathematics); Medino Abrams (Indigenous activist /religious leader); Tiadi Welch (Young businesswoman).
Try to make contact with any of these folks to ask them for their accountability in explaining the politics of the GHRA and you will not succeed. The GHRA makes pronouncements of governmental behaviour using strong language in their disagreements with the Guyana Government, but you cannot elicit a response from these executives.
I made contact with one of them and she declined to discuss the GHRA. In my article of Wednesday, May 6, 2026, titled, “Horror or comicality in anti-government politics,” I listed the names above and asked that those who know them if I can have a contact number for each. The reason I needed a reaction was what the co-president of the GHRA, Norris Witter, said at the TUC Labour Day rally: “The PPP is a dangerous disease and therefore we must work together to determine what kind of dangerous medicine is required to get rid of this disease.”
Now we have a call from Transparency International, Guyana Inc (TIGI) for Guyana to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) similar to what South Africa had. The last group of people in the entire world to speak of transparency is TIGI. The world saw one of the most bizarre and degenerate attempts to rig a general election to ever happen in a country in the 20th century and it took place in Guyana, where TIGI had a presence. The malignancy of the attempts lasted five months.
Where was TIGI when this descent into Draculean behaviour by APNU and certain elements in the GECOM staff were taking place? I saw a podcast in 2022 in which the then leader of ANUG, attorney Timothy Jonas, asked his fellow panelist, then head of TIGI, Frederick Collins, to cite the occasions when TIGI condemned the 2020 rigging.
TIGI was nowhere to be found in Guyana between March and July in 2020. The Guyana Human Rights Association was nowhere to be found during that same period. These two organisations along with Red Thread are a disgraceful embarrassment to the civil-society name in this country. Suddenly, TIGI wants a TRC in Guyana.
What has happened in Guyana and what is taking place in Guyana for there to be a TRC? Suriname had a violent Maroon uprising and a military coup and there was no advocacy for a TRC in Suriname. There was an army revolt in Trinidad, then years later a violent seizure of Parliament by the Muslimeen group in which the Prime Minister was shot. There were no demands for a TRC in Trinidad.
Britain, France, the UK, Germany and Holland brutalised the peoples of the colonies they invaded in the 19th century. There has never been any advocacy within those countries for a TRC. The Second World War was about to end when the US used the atomic bomb on Japan, and the racism in 19th-century and early 20th-century America led to untold numbers of tragic deaths of African Americans. There were no calls for a TRC in the US.
Just two years ago, Guyana had a Commission of Enquiry into the 2020 elections disaster. No one from TIGI testified. TIGI officials couldn’t testify because they were nowhere around when the disaster unfolded. So who is going to testify at this TRC? Walter Rodney’s most intimate comrades refused to give evidence at the commission of inquiry into his death.
Are the people who planned the Rodney assassination going to admit to their crimes? The commission’s findings point to two very high-level state-security officers who were involved in Rodney’s murder. These two men are very prominent in Guyanese society today. I saw one at the funeral of Rupert Roopnaraine. Are they going to appear in front of the TRC and concede that the commission’s report was right about them?
If there is a TRC in Guyana, it will fail because I am going to testify and name names about what I know happened in Buxton between 2022 and 2005. Are those who are named going to give testimony? There has been only one TRC in the world, and that is because apartheid was one of civilisation’s worst crimes. But I would like to hear the reason for a TRC here.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
