The CIOG is no innocent body

Dear Editor, I refer to a letter by the head of the above named organization, Mr. Fazeel Feroze (“Mr. Kissoon must be aware of the dangers of hearsay from anonymous sources,” KN, August 5, 2014.) I was drowning in the vortex of countless pursuits and could not submit an earlier response. I begin my reply to Mr. Feroze with a personal reflection. In my life on this earth some of God’s most merciless, unethical creatures that should not have been part of society have come from people who either were/are preachers in their respective religions and denominations or people who were/are very religious. In my philosophical scheme of things I place no more value on the character of religious people than ordinary mortals who are not religious or who are non-believers. I was trained at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in Guyanese history and I can say unapologetically the Muslim, Catholic and Hindu churches have played disgraceful and destructive roles in the evolution of contemporary Guyana, the details of which need not occupy us here. Let me make it clear that these thoughts are not directed to Mr. Feroze himself, though I think they do apply to the CIOG, both in its past and present configuration. I will forgive Mr. Feroze for his terrible advice to me to be aware of hearsay from anonymous sources. Mr. Feroze is not a media operative. If he was, he would have known that throughout the modern world, the great journalistic scoops originated from anonymous sources. That is such common knowledge throughout the world and most people know it so no need to belabour the point. However, I would offer some advice to Mr. Feroze. Since his organization is close to Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo and the present government, he should get the Chronicle and the Guyana Times to desist from printing thousands of letter penned by anonymous signatures. Now for Mr. Feroze’s assertion that the CIOG will not condone its intervention in judicial matters, I direct him to the publication of a court case in the April 24, 2010 issue of the Stabroek News. The court heard that Mrs. Shalimar Hack, the DPP and wife of Mr. Moen Hack, the leading scholar of the CIOG had ordered the arrest and charge of narcotic trafficking against police officer Maurice Smith. Smith in his testimony told the court that he felt it was malice against him because he had ordered the search of the suitcases of the Hacks at the airport and for that Mrs. Hack had written to the police to have him dismissed. Mr. Smith was freed of the charge and he was not sacked from the police force. Surely, this does not reflect positively on the image of the CIOG. In that news item, Officer Smith told the court he was summoned to appear in front of his superiors after the DPP wrote the police hierarchy about the searching. This columnist asserts most emphatically, that one of the most senior police officers in the force told a number of media operatives that a high-level CIOG official asked him to release a Muslim scholar who was at the station for investigation of pedophilia. This columnist insists that officials from the CIOG approached a policeman and implored he not testify against the son of a wealthy Muslim businessman that he and other ranks arrested after bacchanalian revelry at Vreed-en-Hoop at 3.30 a.m. The son pulled his gun at the police party and fired. In a strange twist of fate the policeman was charged for assaulting the son. As to Mr. Feroze’s bold declaration that as commanded by Islamic law, Muslims must denounce racism, I will be cynical and react to this fiction by saying, “yea right.” I would like Mr. Ferioze to know that the racism I have seen in Indian Muslim Guyanese equals that I have seen in all Guyanese. Apparently Mr. Feroze, it doesn’t look like Islam has a lot of influence on Muslim Indians because the election statistics from 11957 onwards show that most Indian Muslims have voted for the Indian based party the PPP and not the African based party, the PNC. Now, Mr. Feroze that surely seems to be ethnic motive in voting. Are Muslims supposed to be ethnically motivated? I hope not. Let me end by asking you a question Mr. Feroze. Are you serious enough to believe in this Dostoyevskian cemetery of ethnic madness that Guyana was and still is that Muslims have not been equally guilty as Indian Hindus and Indian Christians? I lived in Guyana my whole life and studied Guyana my whole life, Mr. Feroze. Africans and Indians, despite their religion, have happily lived in their Shakesperian purgatory of burning contempt for each other. Hope Islam can change that in the upcoming general elections. I would be happy to work with the CIOG in that poetic pursuit Frederick Kissoon