WHAT ETHNIC CLEANSING?
Aug 28, 2016 AFC Column, Features / Columnists 0 Comments
We believe that Guyanese people in general are tired of the cesspool of racism that the PPP continues to stir no matter how distasteful people find it. This is just one more thing that distracts the government from focusing 100 percent of our time on nation building.
The PPP just keeps on doing what they do best – play the role of the agent provocateur, throw up road blocks, distract people’s attention from their opportunities for personal growth, lie, report on situations with that special Machiavellian twist, propagandise to save face, and accuse this government of practicing ethnic cleansing.
People’s memories are not that short, and 1992 was not so long ago!
The very necessary process of examining public servants to test their suitability for the posts they hold is still in progress and the public service is not yet cleansed of the untrained and the corrupt. We know now the reasons why many citizens complain that there’s not been sufficient change in the delivery of service, or no change in some instances. It turns out to be a slow process that is being retarded by the carping opposition.
Any honest government worth its salt would ensure that the public service is cleared of corrupt, inept persons who were not serving in the interest of the people, irrespective of their political affiliations. Race has no place in this equation. New governments all over the world are compelled to measure every system for its efficacy when they go into office, and restructure according to the regulations enshrined in the laws.
Guyana was never an exception, not in 1964, 1985, 1992 and certainly not 2015. This is not ethnic cleansing.
The AFC made commitments to the people of Guyana to make their lives easier, to remove red tape and systemic bureaucracy, to give every person a fair chance to benefit from the nation’s resources, whether it is a piece of land to farm or construct homes, or assistance to start or expand an enterprise. These commitments were made with the understanding that the public service had to be re-aligned to make it hospitable and efficient.
Our focus has not changed…these remain our objectives, the government’s objectives, and they WILL be accomplished.
The PPP’s claims that the government is practicing ethnic cleansing are stupid and ludicrous. Ethnic cleansing, properly defined, is very seriously destructive. Ethnic cleansing wreaks havoc. The official United Nations definition of ethnic cleansing is “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group”. These events are perpetrated under conditions resembling civil war and states of emergency. Constitutions are suspended and martial law takes its place.
Global scholars have defined ethnic cleansing as the “systematic forced removal of ethnic or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group. It has been carried out with murder, torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, extra-judicial executions, sexual assaults, confinement of civilian populations in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilians, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilian areas, and wanton destruction of property. All of these acts are crimes against humanity”.
No one (at least in the previous generation) would forget the horrible events that occurred in the African nation of Rwanda from April to July 1994. That was ethnic cleansing at its worst. Members of the Hutu ethnic majority (in government) murdered as many as 800,000 people mostly of the Tutsi minority (Rwandan Patriotic Front) in four months! Hutus and Tutsis were differentiated only by association, not by any physical differences.
The genocide spread throughout the country with staggering speed and brutality. Ordinary citizens were incited by local officials and the government of Hutu Power to take up arms against their neighbours, those whom they believed to be Tutsi, and from this a horrendous killing spree ensued that saw such brutality of man against his compatriots that the world prayed that we would never again witness anything akin to it in this lifetime or the next.
By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) party gained control of the country through a military offensive, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans of all persuasions were dead and thousands more displaced. There were over 2 million refugees exacerbating a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Rwanda’s international image has since been tarnished by this massacre.
That was ethnic cleansing!
We still wonder how the PPP determined that the government’s decisions to terminate several employment and civil construction contracts qualify for this harsh terminology, especially considering that some workers/contractors were not of Indian extraction. Their comments throw a harsh spotlight on their mindset that has always been rooted in racial division.
We recall the comments made by Dr. Roger Luncheon while under cross examination during the Jagdeo/Kissoon libel trial. He had stated that his government could find no ‘black person’ sufficiently qualified for appointment to ambassadorship.
Guyanese are fed up of being placed into brackets. We are no longer tolerant of people disposed to act with racial discrimination as their motivation. Irrespective of where our foreparents came from, we are all Guyanese and unless we relinquish our citizenship in another land, we’ll always be Guyanese.
We note that former president Jagdeo has done an about-face. Overnight he has become clairvoyant and is promoting himself as having all the answers to the woes that he himself created during his 12 to 15-year reign. Notice how we avoided the dramatic terminology “reign of terror”. These are dramatic words not even befitting the years of deprivation that Guyanese people suffered between 1999 and 2015.
His new 20/20 vision, this cloak of righteousness that he donned, is hardly enough to make people forget his rule as a foul-mouthed, attention-seeking, disrespectful despot who took what he wanted no matter how the nation felt about it, while he distributed our land, our benefits and our wealth to his confederates who genuflected to him.
This is a peaceful nation and the AFC will continue to do everything in our power to maintain that equilibrium.
