The PPP has condemned aspects of Kaieteur News’s coverage of the Lusignan massacre and subsequent events.
In a press release yesterday it said that in particular it was very disturbed by “blatant falsehoods” peddled in a recent Page One Comment and a Peeping Tom column in which the PPP/C was accused of organising post-Lusignan protests on the East Coast of Demerara and in West Coast Berbice.
“The PPP understands the anger and frustration of our people over public safety and seeing justification for a peaceful and orderly protest, while at the same time recognising that nothing should be done to escalate tensions.
The PPP is deeply concerned that persons, including innocent children and bystanders, have suffered when the police attempted to disperse unruly marches.
“But for a newspaper to say that the party had instigated the marches to embarrass the President is sheer nonsense, and betrays a not-too hidden motive of creating a schism between the party and the Government.
The statement went on to refer to the “gruesome photographs” of the victims, including one of a mutilated child, carried on the front page and in the Internet edition of the Kaieteur News, January 27, which it said, “recklessly sensationalised the horrors of the Lusignan crime.”
This, it continued, not only showed gross disrespect for the dead and insensitivity towards the pain and anguish of survivors and relatives, but also constituted “a cheap ploy to incite and inflame passions.”
The PPP said that the newspaper almost succeeded, since protesters on the West Coast of Berbice were holding up those photographs to demonstrate their anger.
Although Kaieteur News was the victim of a terrorist attack, the release said, the newspaper “seems to have learnt nothing.” The PPP also accused the paper of romanticizing criminals, and even highlighted the editors’ rendezvous with the “master-butcher,” Fineman.
“They have gotten Fineman to agree not to kill children, as if it is fine by them for him to take out innocent men and women!” said the statement.
It concluded by saying that the PPP believed in freedom of the press, but that freedom was not unfettered: “It must be exercised with responsibility and with care not to stir conflicts or create divisions for self-serving and hidden agendas.”
