Dear Editor,

While I am sympathetic to Ms McAlmont’s clearly-implied agenda in ‘History this week’(‘Valerie Hart: The Woman at the Heart of the Rupununi Uprising,’ SN 1.1.09) I find it distasteful that the 40th anniversary of my father’s demise has been used as the occasion to champion the political and leadership skills of the woman who is an unquestioned accessory to that murder. To lionize a murderer, especially in the context of the wider failure of Guyana’s justice system to fulfil its sworn duty to provide justice, is a shocking example of how agenda-driven reporting can kill objectivity.

My younger sister, Thula Norton Lambert, has recently e-mailed a thoughtfully-written, contextually relevant article on the 40th anniversary of the Rupununi Uprising. To the best of my knowledge, that article remains unpublished. That in its stead I would find Ms McAlmont’s grudging admiration for a woman who “…proved to be an aggressive and shrewd lobbyist prepared to do or say anything to achieve her ends,” and praise for her “…tremendous courage and determination,” is particularly galling.

Since as a victim of this senseless and as yet unpunished crime I have my own agenda, let me close with a paraphrase of Ms McAlmont’s closing question: Since surviving victims of the Rupununi tragedy are reading this, would they be pleased at the current status of the administration of justice in the country of their birth?

Yours faithfully,
Trevor A. Norton
Comment extracted from Stabroek News website.