The stories of ordinary people that will never be told

Jun 27, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When I read a published letter of the daughter of Vic Puran calling for justice for her father, I have to truly confess my emotional reaction was anger mixed with honest sympathy.
I could understand how this young woman felt – she believed her father was murdered and justice was not given. But immediately the thought of the treason accused came to mind; Vic Puran was the special prosecutor.
Ms. Puran is the daughter of a prominent lawyer and through that channel she will be allowed to publish her beliefs and opinion on her father’s death. The young lady is also an educated person and society allows educated people more maneuverability than the ordinary folks.
Maybe Ms. Puran will again publicize her call for justice for her father. What we may never hear about are the feelings of the children of the woman that Vic Puran tried to send to the gallows.
Puran took the case as special prosecutor for the three treason accused, among them Bruce and Carol Ann Munroe who had two small children when they were arrested. I met Puran at the building site that he had purchased (former Foreman Shoe Repair Shop in Tiger Bay. He wrote in a letter in the press that it was owned by 29 of his relatives) and I made it known to him that our long friendship had come to an end. I could no longer see him in any positive way after his acceptance to prosecute three innocent persons on a charge that could lead to their execution.
He said to me. “You have to see the evidence.” I replied, “I’ve seen it and it is thrash.” Puran knew it was trash but he wanted to send a father and mother to their death. I knew that he had made a deal over a very serious fix he was in and the PPP exacted its pound of flesh from him. Vic Puran, whom, I had known since I was 20, had become a perverted lawyer. To date, we have had no reply to Puran’s daughter’s letter in the press from the Munroe children. We probably never will. That is the life of ordinary people. They do not have access to society as we educated people do.
We may never read how these children feel as they felt the pangs of pain as their parents were taken from them. They may never write. Those who may never write are the relatives of the three men killed in the protest against the electricity hike in Linden in July 2012. What went through their minds as they heard about the level of compensation — three million for two of them and two million for the other?
A year is approaching since the men were shot dead and already Guyana has got on with its sordid, miserable, empty life as a country and the event is quickly fading. The compensation tragedy remains one of the strongest indictments of the horrible, soulless, mindless nature of this country. It remains one of the most poignant indictments of the loss of civilized thinking in this country.
Three million dollars is the equivalent of fifteen thousand American dollars. A Commission of Inquiry collectively awarded a mere forty thousand dollars to the relatives of three men shot by the police in a wanton display of violent ignorance.
As a human rights activist this will remain one of the saddest episodes in my career as a person fighting for the rights of the poor and powerless. A former Chancellor of the Judiciary, Justice Cecil Kennard, actually publicly defended the amount (see my March 17, 2013 column, “Kennard’s Kennedya, Guyana’a Guayacan)
Of course you cannot blame Ms. Puran for writing about her father. That is her right. It is for many of us in the human rights community to publish the anger and anguish of those who have endured horrible tragedies in this country but cannot write the way Ms. Puran has. We should tell their stories.
Where are the voices and pens of the children, relatives and spouses of countless victims that were brutalized and killed by Guyana’s enduring authoritarian system? Their stories must be recorded for future generations.
This writer has been guilty of neglect with respect to the murder of Ronald Waddell. Each year in June, I write about Walter Rodney but I have seldom mentioned the abominable injustice that has been endured by the relatives of Ronald Waddell. It is this writer’s opinion that he was a victim of a combination of extra-judicial killers in association with State actors that points to the involvement of a powerful politician.