During the racial disturbances in the early 1960s, atrocities were committed by Indos and Afros alike. As a high school pupil, I was beaten up one afternoon on D'Urban Street and pushed into the concrete gutter. Then, in late 1964 I watched in amazement at the large number of home-made rifles British soldiers fished out of a 4-foot trench in my street at Uitvlugt Pasture, an Indo neighbourhood. Heaven knows how many Afros were shot with those guns.
In Afro-dominated Uitvlugt Casbah, Indo houses were dynamited. A newly built mosque in the Muslim cemetery behind Casbah was destroyed in broad daylight by men with sledge hammers and axes.
After the riots ended, I met Rev Timothy Waldron, the new parson of the Pilgrim Holiness Church in Casbah. His wife showed me the scars on her forearm, in which a bullet was lodged. That old couple had lived in Mahaicony when Indos attacked their home and shot their son dead. One of the persons arrested for that murder was Ramesh Balsingh who later became Cheddi Jagan's bodyguard-driver.
We ought to recognize that we share the same blame, and in order to move forward we must avoid taking sides on the basis of race. Fifty years have passed since those deadly racial disturbances but racial prejudice is alive and kicking among Guyanese. When will it end?
This will all come to an end when we have a leader like the late Dr. Walter Rodney who was murdered by the PNC. I currently do not see a leader like him.