Coil: Sweet oranges and other things from Canal

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

“I aint know.. is a big APNU racial lady” .. the text message read. The woman who sent the text was in a police matter. She assumed that I would understand and sympathise with her race lens. I have never had a conversation about race with her.

This message was a few days after Dameion Gordon and Vernon Beckles were attacked in Canal No. 1 Polder. It has been a week since that attack and the Guyana Police Force have not arrested or charged anyone.

The statement from the Guyana Police Force as Mosa Telford writes in Stabroek News does not help. 

The GPF seems to want the public to believe that there was no attack, there was no racism involved in the violence and that those who attacked the men do not deserve to be targets of police intervention.

One journalist used social media and declared it was “an East Indian mob” which attacked the man.

Many persons used social media to share their own experiences of racism in Canal.

Before Phagwah 2017, when I thought of Canal , it was about sugar cane farming, sweet oranges and tangerines, pineapple , coffee cultivation and a place where people did not have fences and gates.

I have gone into Canal to sing with the Ramayana and Chowtaal Gole, Many of the yards did not have fences or gates . Some people had low hedges of different plants to mark borders. I remember one man who built his house saying that he did not want to put up a fence at the time of building – it would look bad because his neighbours did not have fences.

He and his neighbours are of different ‘ethnic’ origins.

Fences and gates have appeared though over the years.

The investigation into the attack seems to have gone into a stalemate. There seems to be no plan for resolution beyond another episode, another incident to use in an arsenal of unresolved incidents for when elections come.

Vigilante justice

In 2008, citizens in Bare Root attacked and killed Radika Singh. No one has been charged for her murder. In 2013, citizens in Sophia attacked and killed Nigel Lowe. No one has been charged for his murder. The justice system , starting from the police, has failed to condemn mob violence. It seems easy to get away with murder and violence when acting in a collective.

There is a vacuum in Guyana when it comes to discussions about the use of violence. Many people feel that children and alleged bandits , should be beaten as part of the cultural norm. There is no space to question and imagine that policing and management of security can be different.

“Stupid coolie fool”

There was an argument and the bright young black woman who was angry at the time shut me up with her final comment as she walked “Stupid coolie fool’. I was not sure of the redress at the time.

Twenty five years later , the young woman and I worked together. I am positive that if she finds me stupid now, it would not have anything to do with my ethnic origins.

There complex narratives of race.

During 2001 and 2002, a woman of in Annandale, Miss Ann spoke of living good with the black people across the dam, andthat it was a ‘set of young people, dis set of young people’ who were harassing her.

In a report in Stabroek News on March 19, 2017 about Haslington, one of the residents spoke of the memory of leaving Enmore during the race disturbances – “The Indians in Enmore were okay. It was the set of Indians who were forced out of other villages, specifically Golden Grove that did all of this.””

Lincoln Lewis writes in his column on Sunday 19^th March, 2017 about the failure of the Government to establish the Constitutional mechanisms like the Ethnic Relations Commission and the Human Rights Commission to address .

He wrote “The reluctance of political leaders across the political divide to act, makes you wonder if their non-action is either weakness or if they are comfortable retaining the status quo, where individuals and groups are pitted against each other, for them to come out after the fact to merely condemn. Why a society like ours, where treatment of each other based on race remains a problem and find political fodder, often to the detriment of the masses, must we be accepting mere condemnation without hearing when systems will be put in place to establish what are constitutionally required?”

Roxanne Myers wrote in the Stabroek News in September 2016 about the need for the various mechanisms to address not only racial discrimination, but other forms of discrimination.

Guyana’s politicians, if they really enjoy playing Phagwah with each other, have an opportunity from the message to take it further to actually establish the mechanisms to increase access to justice.

A journalist went to Canal and heard from the owner of the shop and another resident that ‘We don’t show nobody any racial thing around here?”

In another time and place, with people who were working on justice and reconciliation, this would have been the opportunity to hear an open invitation to Dameion Gordon and Vernon Beckles to return and take the ‘drinks’ which they were going to take on the night the citizens attacked them. 

The men would rightfully probably want to avoid any risk.

There is a vacuum which has to be filled. We need to learn after experiencing and tolerating and accepting racism and other forms of discrimination, on how we confront the discrimination and move beyond it. We need to learn what to do after we name the discrimination. Do we leave the racism as is? Beyond punishing racists, what else is there to do?

I might get the opportunity to have the conversation with the young woman who sent me the text. I would work to talk with her to understand justice should work the same as it she or anybody else was dealing with “a PPP racial woman’ There are no guarantees though.