Protest has marked the West Indian/Caribbean Labour Day Parade today in New York, United States. Guyanese Americans, their Caribbean and American counterparts, are in the parade on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, carrying banners and placards bringing to the world’s attention what is happening in Guyana.
The protest was organised by Rickford Burke’s Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy (CGID), other Guyanese organisations in the diaspora, and the United States (U.S) Black Lives Matter movement. The protest is a response to the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government’s presence in the parade with a band called the Nomads Carnival. Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce Oneidge Walrond, and Junior Minister of Housing Susan Rodrigues are representing the government in the parade.
For the first time in more than half-century of the West Indian Day parade a government has sought to politicise the event by participating in band.
Protest on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn USA, at West Indian Labour Day Parade, Sept 2, 2024.
Last week the protest organisers made known they “will not allow the PPP government to subjugate the African Guyanese population, then come to the diaspora to party with us as a distraction.”
Organisers of the protest said they take strong objection to ministers of the government going to New York to participate in a so called ‘One Guyana’ carnival music truck, as part of the West Indian parade, when racial and political discrimination is pervasive in Guyana.
According to the groups, the PPP government is a brutally racist and violently oppressive, anti-black government, the most racist regime in the Western Hemisphere. “African Guyanese for the most part are treated like second-class citizens whose rights and freedoms are being infringed and severely curtailed by racists in the PPP cabal,” organisers said.
Protest on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn USA, at West Indian Labour Day Parade, Sept 2, 2024.
Digging down, the organisers warned that the government is an authoritarian ethnocracy that uses 95% of Guyana’s oil and gas revenues to benefit the East Indian population of Guyana. They also made known that East Indians who do not support the PPP are too targeted and discriminated, likewise for the Indigenous people.
Addressing the issue of the hundreds of African Guyanese who died extrajudicially during the Bharrat Jagdeo presidency, organisers are demanding an investigation, making known “Black Lives Matter! ” There was a spate of extrajudicial murders during 2002-2006, a period under Jagdeo presidency. The late Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon attributed the organised nature of the killings to “phantom squads.” Members of the Guyana Police Force were reportedly also involved, and then Minister of Home Affairs Ronald Gajraj, under whose portfolio was the Force.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee had enquired about the issue last March and called for a probe into the killings. The local, Institute of Action Against Discrimination (IFAAD) also called on the Government to establish a Commission of Inquiry. No action has been taken to date by the Goverment.
Protest on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn USA, at West Indian Labour Day Parade, Sept 2, 2024.
Mark Benschop, host of the “Straight Up” programme also called for protest action. He had urged persons to protest the government ministers by repeating then Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo’s call “to chase dem out”
The protestors are also demanding the United States Government changes it Foreign Policy towards Guyana until there is racial and political respect, and fairness in the society.
The organising and execution of the protest demonstrate that Guyanese in the diaspora have clout, care about what is happening in Guyana, and can mobilise for actions that would bring external pressure to bear in effecting positive social change in their birth land.
