On July 18, 2012, Guyanese police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration of hundreds of people in the streets of Lynden.
Three workers were killed and many dozens were injured.
The African workers formed the demonstration to oppose the criminal 800 percent increase in the cost of electricity, as the government announced the end of subsidies that made electricity affordable to the masses of people.
In early August, comrades Luwezi Kinshasa, African Socialist International (ASI) Secretary-General and Likay Kongo, a member of the African People’s Socialist Party, attended a demonstration outside the Guyanese embassy in London in support of the African workers struggling against the electricity tariff.
The demonstration in London was attended by different groups with different lines—with the exception of a revolutionary line.
This is a reminder that we need to build the African Socialist International to facilitate the transformation of every struggle of democratic rights of African people everywhere into a struggle for African self-determination and struggle for the unification of the African nation under the leadership of the African workers.
We intervened to state the necessity to end imperialist social order.
We put that struggle in Guyana in the context of the overall resistance of the oppressed nations and peoples against oppressor nations.
The economy of Guyana has been historically dominated by imperialist beauxite companies in the U.S. and Canada.
China is now becoming part of the system of exploitation of Guyana‘s bauxite and other minerals.
We used this opportunity to refute the line that racism is our problem. Imperialism is the real problem and the solution is in achieving our own power like the Chinese and other people have done.
The time allocated to us was too little to expand on all we wanted to say.
We sold copies of the Burning Spear and most people expressed unity, with brief intervention.
Long live the African resistance in Guyana!
Down with the neocolonial government of Guyana!
