I guess the lives/death of Indo-Guyanese do not matter to the Opposition!

Ravi Dev wrote: "Since Simels’s visit in 2007, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge – some very recently from a court in New York. And more information is coming to the surface. While we hope that justice will be done for those who were wronged in the past, we also hope that we have learnt something from that past – especially the politicians who have seized the revelations for mobilisation purposes.
We have to begin at root causes – as best as we can discern then. Our latest decade-old round of violence is fundamentally a manifestation of our underlying political dilemmas. The execution of Mervin Barran, his father and another villager in 2001 aback of Friendship was its first shot, so to speak – and it preceded the 2002 jailbreak, let us remember. The “political sophisticates” would have already been at work and getting the “troops” ready. The outbreak of mayhem and murder that was to follow was simply the inevitable dénouement of the politics of hate that was being preached.

In 2004, I addressed a “Rule of Law rally” at the Square of the Revolution with the rest of the opposition. This rally had followed intense discussions in which the joint opposition agreed – in writing to the UN Secretary General – that it was not only the possible state nexus in the killings by the Phantom Gang that ought to be investigated but also the violence that emanated from “the epicentre in Buxton”. However, in the speeches and the litany of “victims” only the names of the “African young men” killed were called. I protested this selectivity because I knew that to do so would be to ignore the wider context of societal pain and anguish. Today, in the new calls for Inquiry I notice the same selective naming of victims and perpetrators. Déjà vu. Such an approach will only guarantee further decades of conflict because we are ignoring cause and effect effect."


De Parrot's Note: The PNC and AFC in making their case for what they allege as the murder of over 200 persons, to date, have made mention of only two Guyanese of Indian ancestry, namely, George and Shafeek Bacchus!