In Guyana, there are some who insist on pretending our politics is the regular garden-variety parliamentary how-de-do gladhanding – where votes are solicited by kissing babies and such like. They’d close their eyes to the episodic eruptions of numbing political violence that indicate something is deeply wrong in the state of Mudland. The Lusignan Massacre of Jan 26, 2008 – in the wee hours of the morning, seventeen years ago – is one of those horrific episodes.
Eleven were murdered in their beds – 5 children, 2 women and 4 men and their names should be remembered so that they don’t become lost in the anonymity of statistics: 48-year-old Clarence Thomas, his 12-year-old daughter Vanessa Thomas and his son Ron Thomas; 32-year-old Mohandai Gourdat and her two sons, four-year-old Seegobind Harrilall and ten-year-old Seegopaul Harrilall; 22-year-old Shazam Mohamed; 55-year-old Shaleem Baksh; Seecharran Rooplall, 56, his wife Dhanrajie Ramsingh, 52, and their 11-year-old daughter Raywattie Ramsingh. May their lives not be lost for nothing.
Your Eyewitness will never forget the horror that erupted in his mind when he saw the pictures in the newspapers the next day. The worse were those of the children with their guts blown out and strewn on the floor by the machine-gun and shotgun bullets that were fired indiscriminately at them. So who were these gunmen?? Holed up in Buxton on the ECD, they called themselves “Freedom Fighters” for African Guyanese. They launched a war of attrition on the state – but more specifically on the PPP’s perceived Indian-Guyanese supporters in the surrounding villages.
And it’s a repetition of this madness your Eyewitness fears whenever he hears the same incendiary rhetoric of disenfranchisement and dispossession being spouted presently by some extremists in the political realm. Politics and political parties were invented to stave-off exactly this kind of violence to “solve” disagreements – so basically, these people have given up on politics. Lusignan was followed by other massacres at Bartica and Lindo Creek after which the Disciplined Forces thankfully wiped out the Buxton Gang then headed by one “Fineman Rawlins”.
It’s no use thinking this violent eruption can’t happen here again. What’s different today from what things were like before the 2002 Republic Day jail breakout?? With the same constant whining of victimhood and suffering, what’s to stop another handful of extremists to launch another violent “Freedom Fight” against PPP supporters who’re again accused of getting the whole hog?? Didn’t someone on one of the incendiary social-media platforms announce that members of the government ought to be beheaded?
Your Eyewitness hopes that those who would go down this road again remember that “knock got knock back” -as was shown after 2002.
In these matters no one really comes out “on top”.
…at bucking Trump
Columbia learnt the hard way that Trump ain’t messing around about deporting “undocumented” immigrants! All Columbia’s President Petro said when he refused permission for two military planes with deportees was they ought to’ve been treated with some modicum of dignity – and not handcuffed and treated like cargo. But from Trump’s perspective, Columbia was the perfect example of the “Shithole Countries” he’d categorized the South!! What with supplying most of the cocaine entering the US and not being able to stamp out it’s production – even with massive American help – Petro’s leftist orientation didn’t exactly endear him to Trump.
So 25% tariff was slapped on immediately on Columbian exports to the US – going to 50% in a week – plus the removal of visa privileges. By Sunday, Columbia buckled and their Foreign Minister said they’d “overcome the impasse” with the U.S. The nation’s presidential plane was “ready to facilitate the return of Colombians who were going to arrive in the country this morning on deportation flights.”
Would the cocaine suffered the tariff?
…at AI assumptions
Trump’s announcement of a trillion-dollar AI infrastructure investment was based on American chip and modelling costs. All were upended last week by the Chinese DeepSeek that matched their best – at a fraction of the cost!!
