Dear Editor,
Right on cue. The Jackals of War, those that have infiltrated Buxton and found fertile ground for their venom and their diabolical schemes, are hoping, like all those who cloak themselves in the disguise of insurgents, and who employ terror and mayhem, to be given a slice of credibility. A social platform upon which to wage their propaganda war, a forum for finding fertile interest from the strained ethnic fabric of this country, while their sub-human atrocities, they hope, begin to acquire a veneer of justification.
They grasp at the most fragile of platforms; mayoral press conferences, appeals to the sentiments of veterans who may have fallen on hard times, hoping to incite resentment from serving ranks, and hatred-consumed columnists who once read a book they dimly understood on flea warfare.
The modus operandi is one employed by all the terrorist groups in the world. The formula is the same, one need only consult the literature of the other terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda, the Irish Republican Army, etc. on the propaganda war that must be fought fiercely alongside the war of terror, mayhem, rape, murder and infanticide. How unfortunate that it has always been that fertile fodder to such nonsense are those that are simply waiting for a cause, those that still with revolutionary zeal wear the Guevara beret like a badge of some adolescent affectation that they have long outgrown.
Rev Malcolm Rodrigues may have once played a leading role in the activism against the Burnham regime, but he has forgotten how to separate legitimate activism from terrorism. Indeed, nothing in his past activist experience has ever descended into the inferno unleashed on Lusignan. In his zeal to once again don the revolutionary garb of social change, he seems willing to suggest that those that murder children in their sleep are people with whom legitimate governments should negotiate. No sensible, intelligent, moral and logical person will ever suggest that the murder that happened in Lusignan is justified by any social grievance, any marginalization, whether real, perceived or manufactured.
Surely, in Guyana we have other means of addressing marginalization than murdering innocent people in their sleep. Surely, in Guyana, we have other means of addressing economic stagnation than by targeting poor Indo-Guyanese.
Surely, in Guyana, our politicians are not so bankrupt that if there are legitimate issues of power sharing and democratic reforms to be addressed, we can address them other than by inciting racial hatred, committing robbery, rape, and murder. And surely, an academic who also happens to be a leader of the Catholic Church, can suggest more constructive ways of addressing his own observation of marginalization than by counseling dialogue with criminals.
No, Fr Malcolm, you cannot commit such blasphemy against decent human beings in the quest for relevance for your own raison d’etre. Follow the advice given by one of the many writers who have been disgusted by your call for dialogue with these murderers – use your own good office to begin to effect change. Your call is morally reprehensible and socially irresponsible.
Yours faithfully,
Samantha Griffith
