The Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) and IFEX-ALC network have condemned in the strongest possible terms the intimidation of journalists in Guyana.
The ACM and IFEX-ALC stands in solidarity with journalists Davina Bagot, Nazima Raghubir, Tamica Garnett and other media workers in Guyana in their quest to perform their duties freely.
There are people in Guyana calling for God to come and save Guyana. Maybe God did answer Guyana and may have said, ‘I give you people a country with wealth to make you all rich beyond your wildest dreams, a country beautifully positioned on the equator for stable weather all year around and avoiding major natural disasters, a country bountiful in flora and fauna with rich agricultural lands, a country not landlocked giving you people access to the ocean for shipping, a country multiracial and multicultural with the gifts of many races and religions, a country with democracy, education, and beautiful hard-working people countrywide. But, by the way, this God can't help you people with the racist and divisiveness, the destructive mentality you have festered upon yourselves as I never taught you people that as your divisiveness is costing you your country this God gave to you’.
Libraries can be filled with what has been written about Guyana’s Vice President. It has been mostly of what is dark. Instead of adding another chapter to what is widely believed to be a sordid litany of the dangerous and destructive, I take another tack, start all over, on this occasion. In my efforts to raise the bar on our national conversations, this is what will be the norm, with the bar raised first and highest on myself. Some may think that there is joy, possibly some mysterious psychic benefit, from stripping the Vice President, but of which nothing could be more remote from the truth, what is in the heart.
After reading of and listening to numerous reports on the treatment meted out to journalists by some notable politicians and their groups of sycophantic followers, as well as the underground intellectual authors, I sincerely believe that with my 30-plus-year experience in this noble profession, it is incumbent upon me to remind those politicians of what is written in the Constitution and to sensitise the public, including the ‘Johnny-come-lately-journalist’, on the Role of the Media; especially privately-owned media houses.