What about…this massacre?

During the 60th Independence Commemoration activities, much heat was generated when a book analysing the May 25th, 1964 “Wismar Massacre” was launched. Rather than focusing on why the entire minority Indian community was expelled, the objections from primarily African Guyanese activists such as WPA’s Black Pudding Man sadly centred on whether the tragedy could be called a “massacre” when “only” three persons had been murdered!!
Now your Eyewitness doesn’t want to rake up those still-simmering coals, but he’s noticed one of the main objectors in the Wismar debate – PNC MP and ex-Chairman of Region 10, Sharma Solomon – again spewed out his decade-long letters-to-the-press campaign about the July 6 Son Chapman tragedy that followed the Wismar Massacre – when some 43 African Guyanese were killed after an explosion tore the boat apart.  But this gentleman has now added to the litany of killings he seeks to commemorate by now sending out annual missives on the Police shooting of three Lindeners back on July 12, 2012!! After they refused to obey their orders to clear the Wismar Bridge they were blocking – to protest the equalisation of Linden’s electricity rates to match the rest of the country’s!!
“Britain remembers Peterloo. South Africa remembers Sharpeville. Northern Ireland remembers Bloody Sunday. Linden remembers its 18th of July Martyrs” claimed the fella. Now, all these events have been labelled “massacres” – Peterloo: 18 killed; Sharpeville: 69 killed; and Bloody Sunday: 13 killed!! So, Solomon’s having his (incendiary) cake and eating it too: rejecting three persons killed in Wismar as a massacre but equating the three killed at Linden as “martyrs” of a massacre!!
But your Eyewitness wonders how come these PNC worthies don’t ever mention the acknowledged massacre at Agricola – a PNC stronghold – back in 2006 when Fineman’s gang of Buxton-based “Freedom Fighters” murdered eight persons there!! The 15 gunmen killed three security guards at the Two Brothers Gas Station, then entered Agricola, where they shot and killed an elderly couple in their beds; internet café manager Fenton Rudder and Assistant Town Clerk Lavern Garraway-Scott; and taxi driver Cecil Duncan. Is it because the massacre precipitated the following conversation between a COP (F) who became a PNC Minister and the then PNC Chair (B)?
F: (Muffled)… watch; the move good, but yuh all ain’t mek no statement about them eight people wa dead you know.
B: No, I don’t check pun da PR thing, but ah gon gaffa find out from them in the morning
F: You all shoulda been the fus people fuh run in deh. That is a Black people community.
B: Well, boy…
F: Bannuh, bannuh I …
B: You give me information.
F: I, I deliberately turn the thing away…

…working??
Your Eyewitness has long questioned the unemployment figures thrown out by the Opposition misusing outdated data from international bodies. Yesterday, the finance minister offered some figures that appear much more in consonance with what we can see all around us with our own two eyes!! “The reality is jobs are being created more rapidly than we are able to produce people with the skills that are required to take up those jobs…. In 2020, when President Ali came into government, the unemployment rate in Guyana was 12.8 per cent. In 2024, that had been reduced by half from 12.8 per cent to 6.8 per cent. As it relates to youth unemployment, he said the figure fell from 30.2 per cent in 2020 to 12.1 per cent in 2024.
Now, as your Eyewitness has been stressing – to ease the stress! – When countries speak about “unemployment”, they’re referring to the percentage of people who’re LOOKING FOR JOBS AND CAN’T FIND ANY!!
So, if you have scads of able-bodied persons not working but who don’t want to – they ain’t unemployed!!
Not-working millionaires?

…getting SEALS?
T&T’s PM Kamla said a small contingent of SEALs is in her country handling logistics for a larger deployment!! They’re gonna provide support and training to T&T’s Coast Guard and Defence Force for border protection, drug interdiction, and internal security.
And us??