IT HAS long been recognised that Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana have much more in common than the other 13 member  states  of our Caribbean Community, particularly in relation to ethnicities and cultures, though less so in the case of Dutch-speaking Suriname.     

Apart from their predominant population of African and Indian descent and voting patterns that often reflect ethnic preferences, these Caricom members states have also had their respective share of grave political turmoils of varying dimensions.

Trinidad  and Tobago has had its attempted coups-one involving the military; and Guyana has endured recurring politically driven racial conflicts as well as political assassinations, the most infamous act being the murder of Dr Walter Rodney during the long dictatorial regime of the late president Forbes Burnham.

What, thankfully, Trinidad and Tobago has not experienced and which must not be an occurrence in any of our multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Caribbean societies is the heinous act of “ethnic cleansing” of which Guyanese of Indian descent became victims during one of the worst periods of political conflicts in Guyana’s pre-independence history.

Most regrettably, this tragic occurrence had to be recalled when partisan party politicking, with an inescapable racial overtone, surfaced earlier this month at a commemoration ceremony for 43 Guyanese of African descent, organised by the main opposition party which, ironically has “national unity” imbedded in its name—APNU (A Partnership for National Unity)

I have today chosen to share with Express readers aspects of an analysis originally done for Guyana’s Sunday Chronicle.  

At the outset readers need to bear in mind that what  is operating today as APNU since the general elections of November 2011, is fundamentally the Burnham-founded People’s National  Congress (PNC) that held uninterrupted state power for almost a quarter, based on documented electoral fraud’. 

APNU’s leader is the  68-year old  retired brigadier of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF)and with known association with the PNC.

Now,  as if committed to sustaining old political hostilities that fuel the racial divide that makes national unity in Guyana such a mountainous challenge, Granger, has expediently opted to overlook a most outrageous dimension of Guyana’s most painful fratricidal warfare during the 1960s.

It is all the more troubling, if not shocking, that the ex-GDF brigadier should have chosen to ignore referencing the single most despicable ethnic-cleansing political development of Guyana’s 1964 race-driven conflicts when addressing the memorial event marking the 49th anniversary of the horrendous bombing  tragedy of the transport vessel, Son Chapman on July 6, 1964.

Speaking at the memorial service two weekends ago at “Burnham Drive” (first name  of the late president Burnham), and against the backdrop of an imposing monument  bearing the names of the 43 victims who perished on board the privately-owned Son Chapman in the Demerara River, APNU’s Granger claimed:

“….The communities of Mackenzie—(renamed Linden, while Burnham was in power)—Wismar, and Christianburg, had been targeted for terrorism by ‘the masterminds of terrorism…They succeeded”, he added, noting that “over 176 persons were killed during that dark period and thousands of buildings were burnt…”

As the chief reporter of the then British-owned Guiana Graphic newspaper, I  was among media colleagues providing first-hand accounts of tragedies like that of the Son Chapman, as well what directly followed but, astonishingly, APNU’s Granger—conveniently failed to mention.

It was the  infamous political reprisal that was to ferociously dislocate once harmonious multi-racial communities in the Upper Demerara River region, some 65 miles away from the capital Georgetown.

It came to be more popularly described as “the Mackenzie/Wismar massacre” when hundreds of Guyanese of Indian descent were specifically targeted as victims for ‘ethnic cleansing” and forced to flee via a ferry boat under armed security forces.  

The crimes of murder, rape, arson, robbery and other degrading acts of reprisal, which had swiftly erupted in that politically-inspired “ethnic cleansing” process in the wake of the Son Chapman tragedy, are well chronicled in the official report by an independent Commission of Enquiry.

Those now piously  talking—like APNU’s Granger—about a “dark  period” of Guyana’s pre-Independence history and glibly refer to “the masterminds of terrorism”, should also acquaint  themselves with relevant available  documents, such as an  infamous “X-13 Plan” uncovered by the police at the headquarters of the People’s National Congress (now absorbed in the Granger-led APNU) and exposed the culpability of the party’s involvement in the then ongoing  political violence.

Now, in 2013, it  may be fun politics for some, like APNU’s Granger, to fake amnesia of  convenience when talking about the “masterminds of terrorism” while being  aware about the dread involvement by both PPP and PNC in the internecine warfare of the 1960s.

Then American and British intelligence were deeply involved in funding  as well as providing other resources to destabilise and eventually remove the PPP-led government headed by Dr Cheddi Jagan.

It is perhaps commendable that there is now a monument located at ‘Burnham Drive’ to remind all and sundry of the 43 innocent victims who perished in the ‘Son Chapman disaster’.

The harsh reality, however, is that the shocking Son Chapman disaster is integrally linked to the unprecedented ethnic-cleansing tragedy that followed. 

If, as the political reasoning goes, the PPP strategists were involved in the Son Chapman disaster as an extension of widening opposition to the government it led in Georgetown, then it would be simply puerile to disassociate  PNC’s involvement in the execution  of what some prefer to reference  as the “Wismar/Mackenzie massacre”. 

Altogether some 176 Guyanese of Indian and African descent were killed during that “dark period” when, for the damning politics of “ethnic cleansing” had its outrageous manifestations in Guyana.