Response to Freddie on his attempt to smear me as a racist

Dear Editor,
I am hereby replying to Freddie Kissoon’s attempt to smear me as a “racist” in his “Kaieteur News” column of October 8, 2020.
(Because this matter of ethnic and racial identity is an important national issue in our multi-cultural society, and continues to be dumbed down as “racism” if Indian-Guyanese in particular dare to assert their ethnicity and culture, I am hoping that you will publish this letter.)
Let me say that I am extremely tired of Guyana, and that the likes of Kissoon are allowed by a news outlet to say whatever he likes without any of the responsibility that comes with the freedom of speech granted him by a democracy.
It is very evident that democracy cannot guarantee civil discourse.
I am very proud of my heritage, my ethnicity, and my culture, as Kissoon points out. My right to all of it is enshrined in the Guyana Constitution and the UN Human Rights Charter.
Asserting those rights at moments when you and your family are under attack for your ethnicity is not only instinctual to survival, but is just and necessary; and in no way stands in contradiction to my moral and principled sense of being, which has been instilled in me by my religion, culture, and familial relationships.
Oppression must be resisted along the lines on which it is being imposed, and world history continues to witness the struggles of peoples who stand courageously for their race, culture, or beliefs against oppressors.
By Kissoon’s simple-minded logic, the protesters around the world in the “Black Lives Matter” movement are all racists, since they are allowing their race to determine how they see the world.
Kissoon’s column was written to criticise an African- Guyanese woman who had written to justify the recent attempts to rig the March general election. He threw my name into the mix gratuitously to make himself, I suppose, an equal- opportunity basher who likes to spew his particular brand of miasma whenever presented with a chance, no matter how flimsy and out-of-context it might be.

Sincerely,
Ryhaan Shah