Union leader Lincoln Lewis was forced to flee his Cummings Lodge residence on Sunday night after three unknown men tried to break in.
Lewis, who said the men tried to follow him using a white car, has not reported the matter to the police, saying he did not know whom to trust. He said he believed the incident was the result of his tireless activism on a range of issues, including the recent killing of the country’s two most wanted men by the security forces. Despite the episode, he said, he remains undaunted and would continue to speak out. “They don’t want to hear what I have to say. They want me dead not alive,” Lewis told a special Guyana Trade Union Congress (GTUC) press conference convened at the Critchlow Labour College yesterday. He did not identify the ‘they’ to whom he referred.
Relating the ordeal, Lewis said that the men parked their car in front of his house and on one occasion, they knocked on his door “like normal visitors.” He said two of them were wearing caps while the third was wearing a flop hat. They first attempted to breach the house just about 10 pm and failing to do so they left. Lewis then turned off the lights in the building. The men, however, returned to the building some time afterward and again attempted to gain entry. Lewis said the men tried to enter the two-storey house through the back and front doors and his bedroom window. It was this point that he felt he had to escape the building. Afraid that the men would open fire on the building after their failed attempts at entry, he left the house on foot and ran all the way to the back of the village. He said the men followed him in a white car, but he was rescued by a minibus driver who took him to the car park in front of Demico House, at Stabroek.
Asked if he had reported the matter the matter to the police, Lewis said he had not. Lewis said he had no confidence in the police to investigate anything he reported.
In response to whether he was fearful for his life, Lewis said: “God ent ready yet to carry me to another place. I have more to do stop the murders…” Lewis also revealed that the union building in Woolford Avenue where he kept his press conference last Friday was broken into and the computer and television set were taken away. “Why would they want to steal the computer?” he asked. He said in the past he has been subjected to threatening phone calls and letters.
He opined that the attack on his life followed his comments last Friday, in which he accused the main political parties of supporting murder after they praised the Joint Services for killing Rondel ‘Fineman’ Rawlins and Jermaine ‘Skinny’ Charles, two of Guyana’s most wanted and dangerous criminals.
He also continues to criticize the 16% Valued Added Tax (VAT). He pledged that when the world Human Rights body convenes in Geneva next year he would ensure that there is a forum on Guyana.
He added: “I will embarrass them; they would have to kill me.”
Meanwhile, acting General Secretary of the GTUC Norris Witter said that following the episode, the GTUC was “concerned… for the likely threat on our brother’s life and property.” He said “those who seek to still the voices of dissent in our society are seeking to instil fear in this brother who has been fearless under [President Forbes] Burnham, [President Desmond} Hoyte and [President Cheddi] Jagan.” He said the union would defend Lewis and all other Guyanese who “dare to speak out on the transgressions in our society.”
Witter said: “We are concerned that the man with the empty rice pot and insufficient feed for his family feels hopelessness yet is afraid to raise his voice and say his children are hungry and starving with no bright future, and that justice flees the poor.”
He said that GTUC stands committed to defend the rights of Guyanese labour and bring change and good governance for all Guyanese.
