PPP/C remembers 1998 attacks
- says PNCR's recent claims 'wild and unsubstantiated'
Stabroek News
January 13, 2004
The ruling PPP/C says recent accusations made by the PNCR about the involvement of a government official in criminal activity is an attempt to politicise the crime situation.
The party describes as "wild and unsubstantiated" recent PNCR statements, which were made in wake of the disclosures about a supposed death squad.
Yesterday, in a message to commemorate the violent attacks that were committed on January 12, 1998, in the wake of a court ruling on the 1997 General Elections, the party said it was concerned about the statements.
"It is the considered view of the PPP that the time is long overdue for the PNC to make a clean break with its current mode of adversarial politics and seek to embrace an approach in which the interests of the Guyanese people are placed above narrow partisan interests."
In January 1998, following a court ruling which gave the PPP/C victory in the 1997 elections, several Indo-Guyanese were beaten, robbed and harassed by organized mobs on the streets of Georgetown and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, in a message to commemorate the events of 1998, the Indian Arrival Committee (IAC) says all Guyanese need to reflect upon the divisions that have polarised the country.
"Especially those belonging to the two major ethnic groups, the Afro-Guyanese and the Indo-Guyanese... [they need] to work assiduously to ameliorate those divisions."
The IAC notes that politically-driven street violence in Georgetown has evolved into criminal violence against Indo-Guyanese. But it says it is political tension which leads to victimisation and persecution of Indo-Guyanese, who by their ethnicity are assumed to be supporters of the PPP.
Meanwhile, the IAC also reiterated its condemnation of Dr Keane Gibson's controversial book, The Cycle of Racial Oppression in Guyana. The IAC has criticised the book as racist propaganda that only encourages the targeting and victimisation of Indo-Guyanese.