Govt must be commended for voting in favour of a recognised Palestinian state

Dear Editor,
These past few months have opened my eyes to the frightening and daunting reality of the world. Widespread ignorance pollutes the air of Guyana, where we are racially abused, religiously scorned and mocked for standing in solidarity with an oppressed nation, which is without explaining the irony of a once colonised country where our Indigenous peoples were killed. Our ancestors were tortured, enslaved, laboured and disgraced by a coloniser nation.
I commend our government for continuously voting in favour of a recognised Palestinian state and their recent votes and calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
However, I find it incredibly offensive, disheartening and hypocritical for our government to welcome the United States Ambassador to the United Nations in our country. This is not only offensive to the few Palestinians residing in Guyana but also disgusting to have a person who was tasked to carry out a vote against an immediate ceasefire and dispersal of humanitarian aid to Gaza to step foot on our lands. Guyana was built off of immense slavery and labour, and it is hypocritical and ironic to pally up with coloniser-states and to allow someone who voted in favour of genocide in our country.
I am even more surprised that the general public is taking this lightly because genocide has been plaguing the earth for decades, and Guyana itself was colonised, occupied and experienced a silent genocide not so long ago. I am incredibly disappointed that the Palestinian flags hoisted around our country were taken down by our leaders.

Our moral duty should be to amplify our voices to fight for the Palestinians. The general public utters words such as “We have bigger fish to fry” when called out on their collaboration and lack of concern to show solidarity with Palestine, which is incredibly ignorant and inhumane to say. Genocide that happens in any part of the world affects everyone in the world. Everyone should be hurt, angered, furious and determined to fight and pressure governments to listen to the plea of an oppressed people.
The last 100 days show humanity to be non-existent, where it is normalised to see videos of children gathering body parts of family members into plastic bags, mothers pulling their babies from under the rubble, fathers carrying children with their brains hanging out of their skulls, orphaned kids embracing the graves of their freshly-buried families, men humiliatingly stripped to their underwear, bodies piled up in mass graves, doctors amputating legs with no anaesthetic and stitching up cracked skulls on bloodied hospital floors because there were no beds left, healthy men go grey in the space of a few short weeks from the sheer trauma of what they have been witness to, journalists being bombed and sniper-shot at, and hopeless to the point where they cannot continue documenting such atrocities any longer, and tragic and desperate attempts of acts of self-immolation to get the world to wake up.
Ignorance supersedes the ability to think logically and contextually for many. One side is grieving and suffering immensely, while the other side celebrates committing genocide and posts it for the world to see, and folks still label this as “complicated and complex”.
I have always been proud of Guyana and honoured to speak for my country’s acknowledgement of a Palestinian state. But as of this week, I am ashamed, humiliated and furious of the actions of our government.
If there is an atom’s weight of humanity, research and find ways to help. BDS, one of the many organisations that dismantled Apartheid South Africa, has an updated list of companies that are explicitly funding Israel with billions of dollars to commit genocide. I urge you to use your voices and speak up for what is right. I will not stay silent, nor will I be silenced.

Yours sincerely,
Richard Moore