Caribbean executions

An innocent looking two-way radio device exploded in the small car that Dr Walter Rodney drove. The explosion injured Dr Rodney’s brother Donald, and killed Walter. It was not an accident.

Although the radio handset had been handed to Walter Rodney by a sergeant technician in the Guyana Defense Force, Gregory Smith, the sergeant, was just a civil servant messenger of government policy – Political Execution. {{more}}That assassination took place on 13th June 1980 in Georgetown, Guyana. Rodney was then 38 years old.

ANATOMY OF AN EXECUTION

Why does a government – in the Caribbean – execute one of its own citizens without process of law? It comes down to the kind of government that we have in the region, and the exemplary kind of citizen that Walter Rodney was.

Our governments are terrified by the voice of the people, when that voice speaks a message of its own. That is one reason why governments speak so much and even encourage their “oppositions” to speak in parallel tones. The more they speak, the less space there is for thinking and expressing new thoughts. Of course, to speak does not mean only to utter words from the mouth, or put them on a page or in a tweet. When Caribbean people speak a message of their own, it means that we are daring to live a life where the state cannot tell us what to do, unless it interferes in our freedom. Yes, our government begins by being uneasy, then becoming suspicious, then by trying to buy out or co-opt our initiative, them by moving to isolate our effort and take away our livelihoods and standing. Finally, the terrified governments take the life of the significant messengers. State terror against its people then begins with a twisted word, a shaft of hate, the harbinger of horror.

Take the case of Dr Walter Rodney of Guyana. From early in his adult life, while he was studying African history in England, he realized that the mass of people who were teaching about Africa had very little respect for Africa, and that a new school of African history had to develop, especially to introduce Africans to their own roots and struggles and to nurture their pride. Rodney decided to become an active part of that intellectual decolonization and people’s history.

Following the lead of earlier Caribbean organizers like C.L.R. James and Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, Marcus Garvey of Jamaica, and Elsa Govia of Guyana, Walter Rodney made a qualitative leap and chose a revolutionary intellectualism — to learn from the masses of working people and to be an organic part of their progress and freedom. In Guyana, where he returned to take up a post as professor of history at the University of Guyana in 1974, the government became uneasy and suspicious and used its power to take the professional’s job away. They hoped to drive him away, isolate him from the people and interfere with his livelihood. That was the first stage of execution by the well-known and progressive government of Forbes Burnham, President of Guyana.

The bombing of Rodney began with an act of victimization of his business and professional affairs. Check it out. Every Caribbean government moves in this way against its people and executes its hope.

Today, in Guyana, 34 years ago, Rodney was assassinated; there is an ongoing commission of enquiry into the events. Today, state execution is ongoing in our region. It calls for enquiry now, doesn’t it?