…Nurse attacked during Opposition-led protest calls for peace; recounts harrowing tale
THE nurse whose vehicle was damaged by a mob last week Friday on the West Coast Berbice (WCB) is calling on Guyanese to keep the peace, even as she and others struggle to get over the trauma of the street violence led by PPP supporters.
Thirty-five-year-old Lynda Todd is also asking citizens to allow the politicians to resolve their differences themselves. As Guyanese continue to wait for the final declarations on results of the March 2, 2020 elections, supporters of the Opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) last Friday took to the streets in West Berbice and on the East Coast Demerara (ECD) and other parts of the country, blocking roads, chanting racial slurs, and attacking the police as well as ordinary citizens. Several persons were injured during the ensuing skirmishes, including policemen. An unemployed 18-year-old protestor, one Seedat ‘Devon’ Hansraj, was also shot during an unrest at Cotton Tree, also in West Berbice, while attacking a policeman, Sergeant Punit Nuth Ibaran with a cutlass. The badly injured officer has had to be hospitalised.
Nurse Todd, who is attached to the National Psychiatric Hospital in New Amsterdam, and members of her family were headed west along the West Berbice Public Road on their way home to Tempe Village, when the vehicle in which they were travelling was stoned as it approached a blockade of burning tyres and other debris at Bath Settlement.
“We got out of the car, traumatised. I have never experienced something like this before. Stones were being thrown, and we had to drive through the fire, because we could not stop,” the public servant expressed. A video of Todd screaming at the protestors after the family pulled over has since been widely circulated on social media. “I kept shouting at them, asking, ‘What did we do to deserve this? Why are you throwing stones at us?’” Todd said, adding: “Everyone was crying and confused. We didn’t know what was happening; what to do.”
Among those in the car was Todd’s 15-year-old brother; her 28-year-old sister, and their parents. Todd and her sister, Latoya, an immigration officer, who also works in New Amsterdam, had both left work early that day when they got wind of the growing unrest. Unable to find transportation after crossing the Berbice Bridge on foot, the two girls had their first encounter with the protesters at Cotton Tree.
“From D’Edward, we walked to Cotton Tree,” she recounted. “Cotton Tree was our first stop; that’s where the first protesting was going on. There was a group of people there with cutlasses; we had to run for our lives.”
The girls were eventually picked up by their father, and immediately they once again came under attack. Todd said the attack was clearly racially-motivated, as aside from racial slurs against Afro-Guyanese, she noted that the vehicle of an East Indian friend of hers who was travelling in front of them, was allowed to pass through the area without incident.
“The minute they saw that we were Afro-Guyanese, stones came from all over. They broke our windscreen; there are dents on the car,” Todd recounted. Todd is now fearful for her life, as she has to pass through several of these villages on her way to work daily. Todd said she found it hard to make sense of what was unfolding before her very eyes.
“What hurt me the most is I don’t discriminate. I have relatives who are [East] Indian; I have Portuguese relatives. It really hurt me to know that you can see public servants coming from work and just target them just like that. It’s not like we were in a quarrel or a fight,” Todd said.
In Friday’s unrest, aside from Bath and Cotton Tree, in West Berbice, there were also pockets of protests in Lusignan, on the East Coast Demerara; at Windsor Forest on the West Coast Demerara; and Belle West on the West Bank Demerara. Though some news agencies described the protest as “peaceful”, Todd said the situation on the ground was far from peaceful.
“I don’t see that as a peaceful protest,” she said. “I feel victimized; my entire family feels the same.” At the wheel of the vehicle when it came under attack was Todd’s father, who barely managed to maneuver his way past a fiery blockage in his desperate attempt to get his family to safety. The dash to safety for the family, however, ended with them finding themselves blocked off on both sides by burning blockages.
Todd said she and her family spent a stressful five hours stuck in their vehicle, as the PPP/C supporters walked by, hurling racial slurs and threats their way.
“We were there locked up in the car in Bath Settlement from about 4[pm] until 9pm, in between two barricades. We could not head to Rosignol; we could not head to Georgetown. People passing with stones, and bottles and bats, chanting [racial threats]. We did not respond, we were outnumbered and fearful for our life,” Todd recounted.
The young nurse is now calling on her fellow Guyanese to let peace reign. As for the politicians, Todd says: “They need to resolve whatever issues they have with the court and whatever, and let this country go back to whatever it was before. And stop inciting violence and race hate. At the end of the day we the people of Guyana need to live in love.”
Source: https://issuu.com/guyanachroniclee-paper/docs/guyana_chronicle_e-paper_3-9-2020