There is widespread indifference to the plight of Africans in Guyana

Dear Editor,

Friday 12 October was African Holocaust day which ACDA and other African organizations commemorated at the Sea Walls. It was and still is the world’s largest mass murder , the world’s largest economic genocide and the world’s greatest sin. The MAAFA.

Slavery was the world’s first nuclear bomb and it was used to create what other races now euphemistically call “the dark continent”. Slavery annihilated Africa, African culture, African family structures, African institutions, African commerce, African values, African economic development.

Other cultures have stigmatized anyone African as the “noble savage” .In essence they want us to be noble “turn the other cheek” while they kill us, rape our women and destroy our hopes.

This year , we also commemorated the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Trade in Captive Africans.. At an elaborate event to commemorate this tragedy and one attended by Tony Blair and the Queen of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, described slavery as an offence to human dignity and freedom and “the greatest cause of grief to god’s spirit.”

With such strong words of condemnation, many would expect a world which rallied solidly behind Israel and extracted financial compensation for the holocaust of a much later date (lasting 7 years), to have come clean of its slave past instead of a criminal denial or lapse into deliberate amnesia when it comes to reparations for the slave trade. But in contrast, all that many beneficiaries of the slave trade and their descendants can offer is annoyingly superficial sorrow and regrets, a condemnable lip-service bordering on hypocrisy.

In Guyana, the MAAFA continues in many forms. The Westminster model is the most visible element of it combined with an elected dictatorship and Indian Ethnocracy which supports and manages a criminal economy that promotes extra-judicial killings.

On African Holocaust Day, Africans in Guyana have come to recognize that Africans are confronted with an Indian population that is indifferent to African needs. This indifference led to the Jewish Holocaust. Hence the words of Elie Wiesel are important to all Africans this month. Elie Wiesel was a holocaust survivor who lost his mother, father and smaller sister during the evils of Hitler. In his speech at the White House on April 12, 1999 he said

“What is indifference? etymologically, the word means “no difference.” a strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.

“What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a conceivable philosophy of indifference? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practise it simply to keep one’s sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

“Of course, indifference can be tempting – more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbour is of no consequence and, therefore, their lives are meaningless, their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

“Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the “Muselmanner,” as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were, strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.

“Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by him. Better an unjust god than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of his anger. Man can live far from god – not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.

“In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

“Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor – never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees – not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century’s wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.”

Indifference has become the attitude of Indians and many in the international community to the plight of Africans in Guyana.

On African Holocaust day, we at ACDA see this indifference the same way Elie Weisel has seen it.

Let those who believe they can con us by choosing our leaders and choosing our agenda know that rebellion is intrinsic to the African’s quest for freedom, justice and equality and continues to be the standard form of resistance against injustice and exclusion. Quamina, Damon and many others illustrated this by their struggles and in some instances by their deaths.

Unless it is misunderstood , be aware that Africans are in unison on this position. We, who live in it, feel it and know it. We stand ready, willing and able to mobilize in this regard. ACDA considers it immoral, dishonest and irresponsible to advise or encourage our people to take part in a winner-take-all election that deepens the politics of racial domination in Guyana and continues our quiet holocaust.

We reiterate our strong and irrevocable belief that Guyana needs shared governance and a constitution in which the Parliament can protect minority rights, ensure racial equity in the distribution of benefits and empower local authorities to promote development in their jurisdictions.

Yours faithfully,

Eric Phillips