This poem was written by Evan Rahday Persaud about that terrible time of Ethnic Cleaning of East Indians in Wismar and Christianburg in May 1964.
Massacre of Indians in WISMAR AND CHRISTIANBURG in Guyana
I lived in Mackenzie, now part of Linden, between January and May 1964 with my maternal aunt and her husband, who was employed as Demba’s Personnel Officer. I attended Mackenzie Primary School under Headmaster Thomas and celebrated my seventh birthday there on 27 April 1964. I was forced to flee from Mackenzie.
This poem was composed between the evening of 10 June and before 10 am on 11 June 2016.
ANTHOLOGY: HISTORY OF MY LIFE
ETHNIC CLEANSING: 26 MAY 1964.
Raj was sixteen when Wismar burned.
Rescued by a black policeman,
He sought refuge in the station
Along with his seven siblings.
A pupil of St. Aidan’s school,
His father dead, two years before,
His mother in Georgetown that day,
When he witnessed conflagration.
First down was John Mohamed’s store,
Night of the twenty-fourth of May.
Then one by one, more buildings burned
Like a row of lamps being lit.
Arsonists were transported in
To burn every East Indian home
And business place and drive them out
From Wismar and from Christianburg.
The buildings burned throughout the night
Into the twenty-fifth of May.
Two hundred and twenty structures
To ash were reduced by that day.
And what of those, whose homes were gone?
To Wismar’s police station fled.
A refuge for assaulted men
And women raped by gangs of blacks.
Victor Bholai Singh was beaten,
Fibula and pelvis fractured.
A fifteen year old girl was raped,
Successively by several.
Isaac Bridgewater was murdered
On the twenty-sixth day of May.
Richard Khan and Paul Nirgin too
Died of their wounds, the previous day.
Seven hundred and forty four
Families became destitute;
Eighty seven businesses lost.
Eight farms had their livestock stolen.
Household furniture were looted
And general merchandise too:
And what could not be fetched away
Were burnt beyond recognition.
Three thousand and three hundred and
Ninety nine individuals
Were, on the twenty-sixth of May,
Evacuated, under guard.
And so Wismar and Christianburg
Were emptied of all East Indians.
And then the twenty-sixth of May,
Was fixed as Independence Day.
