LET me stay how I am and where I am. I live a quiet life and I keep to myself. From home to UG, from UG to Kaieteur News, and from Kaieteur News to home. In the mornings and evenings, I roam the quiet corners of the National Park and the seawall. To venture beyond these realms is to enter the kingdom of hypocrisy.
There is a new recipe in Guyana; publicity mixed with double standards. Brew them together and you get a nice baked cake of social repulsion. This is a poisonous diet for those who believe in equality in life so it is best to keep away from restaurants that serve this dish. What am I talking about? The Reeaz Khan scandal of course
A few weeks ago, I asked the question, how can the People’s Movement for Justice (PMJ) retain within the midst of its leadership someone who has had contacts with the Mash Day escapees and was an advisor to violent gunmen in Buxton.
Yet this particular activist is a leading organizer of the PMJ. The logic here is easy to follow - Gajraj was wrong to have been involved in relationships with gunmen (if it can be proven so) who committed illegal killings of wanted criminals but it was right for the Buxton-based escapees to kill citizens of Guyana.
The PMJ is yet to make a pronouncement on someone in their leadership whose classification of the Buxton killers as freedom fighters can be read in a letter he wrote to the Stabroek News which then editor of Kaieteur News, Anthony Calder, refused to carry.
In that mail, printed in March last year in Stabroek News, this individual within the PMJ wrote, “I am willing to agree that the evidence will show that the African Guyanese armed resistance has killed policemen….” So is there an armed resistance in Guyana killing policemen?
Shouldn’t the PMJ ask this man for an explanation as to why in democratic Guyana, anyone would want to embark on a policy of killing policemen except criminals who logically are locked in battle with the police? But this guy has referred to these criminals at least eleven times according to my research, as freedom fighters in the media - both print and electronic.
Peeping Tom is the latest columnist to call for a press complaints body to monitor us in the print media. I fail to see how a newspaper can publish a letter in which a political activist openly endorses the killing of businessmen and policemen as justified acts by a group he calls freedom fighters when these men are deadly criminals.
Enter the saga of a 13-year-old lover of a 37-year-old businessman. Enter the world of publicity-seeking, middle class women with green cards, suburban houses, fancy cars, expensive aesthetic habits desperately seeking to stem the tide of fading youth. Enter the world of a city lawyer who is yet to explain why he took evidence from a crime scene in which a popular, well-liked businessman was gunned down by a Buxton-based killer. Enter the world of an aging, failed political leader masquerading as a human rights activist in control of a one-man show the past quarter of a century.
What do they all have in common? They have found a good case in which to make up for their opportunistic and downright shameless reticence when ten year old kids were witness to the brutal murder of their parents during a crime spree emanating from Buxton in which political support were given to ruthless killers whose only loyalty to anything was the love of stolen money.
Enter the world of a ten year old girl and the psychotic murder of her father by Buxton-based criminals one block away from the Kaieteur News building in Charlestown.
C.N. Sharma television showed the children of the murdered victim crying uncontrollably as their father laid on the ground with part of his face blown off in his bedroom. Did those who are now zealously pursuing the psychological interest of Reeaz Khan’s litttle lover showed the same interest of the children who were made parentless because of the murder of their parents by the Buxton gunmen?
The action of Reaaz Khan has made the news on a daily basis for almost three weeks in both the print and electronic media. His behaviour can have no justification. All over the world, over varying cultures, people would not accept a sexual liaison between a 13-year-old and an adult man in middle age.
His case certainly has led to hopes of changing the age of sexual consent. But the Reeaz Khan saga has exposed so many of the hypocrites in this society. Some people picked on the Reeaz Khan drama to fulfill their own narrow psychological cravings. How could people remain unmoved when children watched the bestial killings of the parents? How could people remain silent when known criminals on a killing spree for more than 15 months got political support from politicians who are asking us to vote for them so they can shape the future of our children?
Where were the voices of these “goodly,” “concerned,” “alarmed,” patriots of Guyana? Then their moment came. A mother wanted her erring 13-year-old daughter back from the clutches of an elderly gentleman who appeared uncompromising. So the issue reached the courts, and a school of protestors and protectors have emerged and the little girl now rightly has a canopy of support.
As I said before, you can’t blame these people who wanted to ensure the rights of the child. But this article is inspired by a legacy and history of hypocrisy of many of the actors in this protest movement to save the little girl.
The girl has a right to have her future and this writer would be willing to contribute to that effort. But those of us who want justice for all must be prepared to fight for justice for all and not be selective in how we choose our human rights campaign
This old culture of double standards in this country is one of the reasons I have eschewed an active social life. It is best to stay away from these people. I married my Wortmanville sweetheart by climbing the steps of the General Post Office in my blue jeans. There was no socialite wedding. A lonely world is better than a rich, hypocritical one.