“We have been vindicated” – David Hinds

February 22, 2016 By GuyanaTimes, http://www.guyanatimesgy.com/2...dicated-david-hinds/

Rodney CoI Report

Working People’s Alliance (WPA) executive member David Hinds in expressing relief that justice has finally been served, firmly cautioned that the revelations from the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry Report ought not to be used to ignite further conflicts within the country’s already fragile political climate.

Simultaneously, he highlighted that the document has finally revealed who are responsible for the death of his fellow colleague, by bringing to the fore the stark existence of state violence in Guyana.

The Rodney Report confirmed the age-old belief that Dr Walter Rodney was indeed a victim of a State organised and politically orchestrated conspiracy under what is commonly referred to as the “Burnham Dictatorship”.

A great debate has since erupted on what purpose these revelations really serve, with many contending that millions of taxpayers’ dollars were wasted to uncovered a truth all Guyanese already knew.

But for Hinds, though the findings are not surprising, “for us his comrades”, it makes a huge difference to have the details officially documented.
“We have been vindicated. Walter Rodney lives anew. And Guyana gets a chance to re-examine its politics,” he stated.

Though justice has finally reigned for Dr Rodney, Hinds pointed out that there were other victims of State-organised killings – an act that had become a norm in the country’s political veins.

“Rodney was not the first victim of the viscous State—his comrades Ohene Koama and Edward Dublin, and the Catholic priest, Fr Bernard Darke had met a similar fate in the preceding year—but he was the best known,” he highlighted.

Hinds therefore reasoned that the Rodney findings also represent an indictment on Guyana.

“Our post-colonial or independence state, replete with all the characteristics of colonial domination have been the antithesis of independence. We have failed miserably in the area of human-rights for our weak, our powerless, our sufferers and those who dared to stand with them. We in Guyana and the rest of Caribbean never learned how to deal with dissent in our politics.  As a society we are products of resistance, but we have used the state to assassinate resistance at every twist and turn. The State in such circumstances became a tool of repression of dissent. It is a flaw that begs to be corrected,” Hinds stated.

Moreover, Hinds expressed that all the governments since the year of Rodney’s death, have further assassinated the historian through cheap political antics for cheap political gains.

“Some government officials have trivialised the act and in the process diminished Rodney in the eyes of many Guyanese. Some justify the murder by saying he was trying to overthrow the government, he was causing trouble. It pains to hear ordinary Guyanese parrot that narrative—these very Guyanese, 200,000 of them who overthrew a government on May 11, 2015. Should we all be murdered as Rodney was? Should those who conspired to overthrow colonial rule be murdered?” Hinds asserted.

The political commentator also clarified that his party, the WPA did not decline after Rodney’s death but rather, it was Guyana that declined.
Furthermore, the WPA member noted that there will soon be a variety of responses and counter-responses to the verdict of the Commission, with many attempting to discredit the findings. Nonetheless, Hinds expressed hope that the government would rise above the fray and frontally deal with the question of State violence rather than taking sides and causing more conflict.

He cautioned too that the WPA should not use the findings to ridicule those to whom the accusatory finger is pointed.

“This should not be a time for throwing around guilt. Younger and newer members and supporters of the PNC must not be made to bear the burden of an act that was committed long before they came into politics or were born and they, in turn, must not engage in the demeaning politics of justification of wrong,” Hinds stated.

Lastly, Hinds alluded to events in the post-2000 violence in Guyana and said the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) “should get off its so-called high-horse, for it too presided over political assassinations.”

However, even a cursory examination of the period under the PPP/C tenure reveals the State and the Guyana Police Force were actually victims of violence in that period, and was forced to respond to defend the integrity of the state. There were cases where armed gunmen launched direct assaults against the State and actually occupied exclusively, Guyanese territories in Buxton, East Coast Demerara (ECD) and other areas.

In an popular newspaper editorial dated October 25, 2002 it was highlighted, “Buxton is one village that the PPP government is not allowed in and if they dare try, it would be, to quote a WPA-ACDA Black rights activist, Tacuma Ogunseye, be inviting trouble.”

The editorial further detailed, “Buxton is where one goes to locate an abandoned hijacked vehicle; it is where many dead bodies have surfaced; the latest being that of Camaldeo Ganesh, who was kidnapped and killed execution style, with bullet holes to his head, after his family could not deliver ransom money in quantity or time. Or so it seems, unless anti-Indians in the village killed him to prove a point that needs no proof anymore. It is where women, mostly Indians, have been pulled from buses and beaten, in front of their children; it is where, during elections time, Indians have been channa bombed as they pass through the village.”

Additionally, Hinds had commented on the situation at that time, calling Buxton a “terrorist camp” where child soldiers are being recruited and where the PNC (or part of the PNC) is using to promote its radical, anti-Indian programme that borders on ethnic confrontation.

Then, on October 10, 2002, former PNC President Desmond Hoyte held a rally there. He called the likes of Hinds, etc “idiots” who do not know about Buxton. The PNC leader said that Buxton had no more criminals that other Guyanese villages, despite the evidence that said contrary.

Eusi Kwayana was forced to flee Buxton, where he had lived for half a century, by the occupying gunmen who claimed they were an “African Resistance”. Dr Hinds, Kwayana and Red Thread activist Andaie famously rejected their stance in a letter captioned, “Not in my name”.