Land issue should not become an ethnic issue

Dear Editor,
Eric Phillips contends that “There are seven land issues facing Guyana”. Guyana is a racially fragile nation and one has to be careful not to make pronouncements that exacerbate racial divisions.
As a counter-balance to Phillips’ seven, without lending legitimacy to them, intellectuals I spoke with have come up with nine critically important land compensatory issues: 1. Compensation for expropriation of private school property (including land and building) as well as business confiscated by the PNC dictatorship during the mid-1970s; the owners of these private properties were never properly or fairly compensated and they feared for their lives in seeking judicial review. 2. Compensation for expulsion of Indians from prime agricultural land in the 1970s in the greater Georgetown area that were used for public housing for PNC supporters; Indians had prescriptive rights to these farm lands that they had farmed for decades feeding the nation. The planting of these lands helped to feed the nation and their conversion to public housing for PNC supporters added to food shortage.
The farmers were forcefully evicted from the land under the barrels of guns deployed by the PNC regime and were never compensated for loss of produce or the land itself and loss of income.
Fear of loss of life and victimisation deterred Indians from seeking judicial recourse; instead, many victims packed up and left the country and engaged in productive farming in Surinam, Venezuela and Trinidad, among other countries. 3. Compensation (land and money) to varied ethnic groups (Portuguese, Chinese, etc) for the racial persecution (loss of value of their land, property, business as well as abandonment of property that were subsequently occupied by non-owners) during the period of illegal PNC rule between 1966 and 1992; victims never received fair compensation for confiscation and loss of land or other property. 4. Land reparations for victims (non-PNC supporters) of the preferential granting of land and other resources to PNC supporters during the reign of PNC for 28 years and discriminatory practices of land grant against non-PNC supporters during said period of time.
5. Land Reparations as reparatory justice to those indentured servants for the 80 years of “indentured enslavement” (and denial of fair compensation) during which time they built new sugar and rice plantations and rehabilitated old unproductive ones they found, that became very profitable, as well as for moving millions of tons of dirt with their bare hands to which the entire state (country) is the beneficiary. 6. Land compensation for victims of the Wismar/McKenzie massacre who unjustly lost their land, property, and savings and loss of limbs and life. 7. Reparations for farmers whose produce was confiscated by the government (during 1970s and 1980s) or who were coerced into selling to the state at fixed (below cost) prices causing the farmers to subsidise the state which in turn procured the produce for its supporters.
It is only just that these farmers be compensated for their losses plus interests – with tillable land as a form of compensation if the state is unable to meet the compensatory costs estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars at current value. 8. Reparatory justice (return of the money at today’s value) for the PNC confiscation of the Indian Immigration Fund that was used to build the National Cultural Centre. 9. Compensation to victims of the Rupununi massacre for seeking autonomy of communal land that belonged to them.
I agree with Phillips that the land issue should not become an ethnic issue. It should be an issue of justice for all ethnic groups seeking compensation for wrong-doing by the state.
If people had legitimate right to land (property and bank accounts) unfairly taken from them and they did not receive fair compensation, then by all means the state owes them compensation.
Also, the Government should simply compensate people for the brutalisation and loss of property they suffered during the period of PNC rule. The fact that they were brutalised on account of ethnicity is indisputable. The US Government compensated Japanese victims during WWII. Germany and other European countries compensated Jews for their genocide.
An NGO already exists advocating for African slave reparations. But there is none for indentured labourers and the indigenous population who suffered humiliation as well as loss of income and land; all the land had belonged to the Amerindians in communal ownership and was subsequently expropriated by colonizers and divided up rendering the Amerindians almost landless.
An NGO should be formed seeking accreditation with Caricom and Commonwealth Secretariat to petition for compensation for the injustices of indentured servants as well as the injustice meted out against Amerindians, as well as for violations of rights of Guyanese during the period of the PNC dictatorship (1966 thru 1992).
I am just curious – who appoints Phillips as the spokesperson to seek reparations on behalf of Africans against the Guyana state? As Guyana Government appointed rep on the Guyana Reparations Committee to Caricom, was it our Government?
Will the Caribbean nationals be seeking compensation from their respective countries on slave reparation with this petition being spearheaded by Caricom?
If not, why not?
Why only must Guyana pay up? Caricom needs explain!
Should there be reparations for all those victims of the 1960s riots and violence, 1973 Berbice Ballot box martyrs, all election violence, and 2006 massacres at Lusignan and Bartica? And how about reparations for cultural degradation and loss of family values as a result of PNC misrule and banning of basic goods required for religious practices and cultural diet?

Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram