36 Years After Guyanese Activist <PERSON>’s ‘State-Sanctioned’ Murder, a Glimmer of Justice · Global Voices
<PERSON> poster, Georgetown, Guyana, July 2005. Photo by <PERSON>, used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.
June 13, 1980 was a dark day in Guyana: <PERSON>, a prominent historian, academic and political activist, was assassinated.
No-one was ever convicted for the murder, but many of <PERSON>'s friends and part of the country's intelligentsia suggested that his death was politically motivated. The regime of then-President <PERSON> claimed that the car bomb that killed him was made by <PERSON> himself, saying he intended to use it to release men imprisoned on treason charges. The country's opposition — echoed by <PERSON>'s brother, who was injured in the blast — maintained that the bomb was planted in a radio given to <PERSON> by a sergeant in the Guyana Defence Force.
<PERSON>-brother of <PERSON> via SKYPE from #Trinidad. 357
He was with his brother the day he was assassinated pic.twitter.com/dsVh9sx2wt
— AUC Woodruff Library (@AUCWoodruffLib) February 25, 2016
Thirty-six years later, the findings of a Commission of Inquiry into the murder has finally vindicated the views of <PERSON>'s supporters, ruling that “the <PERSON> Government had been directly involved in <PERSON>’s assassination”.
#<PERSON> was victim of state-organised killing #StabroekNews A leaked report of the Commission of Inquiry… https://t.co/SRBiIzfDwn
— Fahamu (@FahamuAfrica) February 25, 2016
‘An indictment’ against the Caribbean community
Journalist <PERSON>, a former trade union leader and lieutenant who led a 1970 army mutiny against the backdrop of Black Power riots in Trinidad and Tobago, called the commission's findings “an indictment not only against the <PERSON> dictatorship that ruled Guyana for 21 horrible years, but also other Caricom governments and countries that never condemned <PERSON>’s atrocities”:
More damning, the report implicated Guyana’s Police Service and Defence Force in the plot to kill <PERSON>, and afterwards to suppress investigations, destroy evidence and ex-filtrate the assassin, soldier <PERSON>, and his family to French Guiana on a military aircraft.
<PERSON>, more of a socialist along the political spectrum than anything else, had been quite critical of the region's middle class and the spineless position it took with regard to building a more equitable society post-independence. He soon grew involved in Pan-Africanism and became a recognised figure in the Black Power movements throughout the region and in North America.
<PERSON>, who had been a friend of <PERSON>'s, chronicled the activist's work and explained why he was a threat to <PERSON>'s People's National Congress (PNC) government:
<PERSON> was a Guyanese patriot, the consummate Caribbean Man and a leader who, had he lived, might have healed the racial divide that has haunted Guyana’s politics for much longer than it has [Trinidad and Tobago]’s.
His book ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ is a classic in colonial and post-colonial politics and economics.
And his innovative method of imparting knowledge and stimulating the minds of the masses by leaving [University of the West Indies]’s Mona campus where he lectured to “ground with the brothers” in urban Kingston in 1968—which led to him being expelled from Jamaica—was one spark that helped ignite black consciousness across the Caribbean, leading to the events of 1970.
Such a man could not be allowed to live. Not in Guyana where <PERSON>, who was installed in power in 1964 by the British and United States governments through rigged elections—I shall direct doubters to hard evidence if they wish—and whose political life depended on keeping Indo- and Afro-Guyanese at each other’s throats.
So <PERSON>, who attracted support across the race-divide, had to die. And <PERSON> thought nothing of killing him. Something we, <PERSON>’s friends, knew all along. 142