Mystery murders in Guyana triggered racial violence and more murders

Dear Editor,
On Friday September 11, 2020, I watched the ZOOM meeting hosted by the International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly in Guyana (IDPADA-G).
The special edition hosted by the IDPADA-G Youth Committee was dedicated “to the Henry boys and all members of our community whose lives had been unjustly taken.”

The ZOOM meeting was ignited by the brutal and savage murders of Isaiah Henry and his cousin Joel Henry, who were found dead at a coconut plantation in Cotton Tree Village, West Coast Berbice that weekend.
The killings seemed to be drug-related, which was illustrated by the fact that an “X” was cut into the back of Isaiah’s head and forehead, while Joel’s chest was cut open.
This was by no means a racial attack, yet, the murders drove hundreds of Afro-Guyanese to take to the streets in Berbice to block roads, burn trucks, and violently attack Indo-Guyanese passers-by and businesses.

In revenge, 17-year-old Haresh Singh, the grandson of the coconut plantation owner, was subsequently murdered. He was ambushed and beaten to death, and his motorbike was set on fire. According to the post-mortem report, he died of brain haemorrhaging and blunt trauma to the head, compounded by compression injuries to the neck.

Chatterpaul Harripaul, who reportedly shot at protestors in Bath Settlement, was also beaten to death.
The IDPADA-G ZOOM meeting was provokingly headlined “Spill the Facts”, which connoted that blood should flow as reprisal for the murder of the Henry boys. None of the eight IDPADA-G speakers offered condolences to the families of Haresh Singh and Chatterpaul Harripaul; the expressed concern by the International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly (IDPADA-G) was only for the Henry boys.
The three headline speakers were Attorney Nigel Hughes, Kobe Smith and Vincent Alexander. All of them spoke in coded messages that the murders of the Henry boys should be avenged by the Afro-Guyanese community.

Attorney Hughes called for a private meeting with all activists to map out a plan for retaliation. Was there a sinister plot behind this secrecy?
Alexander ridiculously compared life under a People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government to slavery. He was bending the truth and distorting facts to incite protest and rebellion.

In a nationwide address, President Irfaan Ali had said the criminals who snuffed the lives out of Joel and Isaiah were barbaric in nature. “There is no other way to describe it. The criminals who snuffed the life out of Haresh Singh … are equally barbaric.”
Vincent Alexander is a dangerous man because he deliberately misinterpreted the speech by President Ali to mean that African people are barbaric.

The latest Police update is that the Henry cousins were killed elsewhere and taken to the coconut fields. The Guyana Police Force stated that, “Preliminary findings showed that the bodies of the Henry boys were discovered at a secondary crime scene”, meaning that the heinous murders were not committed where the bodies were found.
None of these murders should have happened, and the life of teenager Haresh Singh should not have been snuffed out in retaliation.

Sincerely,
Sherry Hosein-Singh