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Grenada's 26th invasion anniversary
ANALYSIS
RICKEY SINGH
Sunday, October 25, 2009
TODAY (Sunday) marks the 26th anniversary of the United States military invasion of Grenada - the smallest nation to have become such a victim of the enormous military might of superpower USA.
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| RICKEY SINGH |
It was unleashed by President Ronald Reagan under code name "Urgent Fury" six days after the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) devoured itself in a state of siege to essentially satisfy Washington's cold war agenda against unproven threats from "international communism" in this region.
Read that to mean Washington's distortion of hemispheric geo-political reality to clobber the influence of a then Soviet Union and allies in Central America and the Caribbean - pointedly Nicaragua (under Daniel Ortega's Sandinista regime) and tiny Grenada (under the PRG of Maurice Bishop and his immediate deputy, Bernard Coard).
Many recollections have been taking place in the region's media, over the past two months in particular, focused on bloody October 19 (1983) at Fort Rupert and the most celebrated of the murdered victims, Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, as well as the release from prison of the last batch of those who were convicted as key players in that killing spree.
But today's primary focus is on the other aspect of Grenada's twin evil which occurred 26 years ago, namely the US military invasion that was as illegal in its claimed official authorisation as it was unnecessary in the pretension of "defending freedom and democracy".
This focus is that of a Caribbean journalist who became a different kind of 'victim' for being harshly critical of the US invasion, that had the collaboration of some governments of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), plus the critical roles played by Barbados and Jamaica under the then governments of prime ministers Tom Adams and Edward Seaga respectively.
Their roles would form a part of valuable archival materials on the collapse of the PRG and the invasion that was being hatched long before the power-thirsty and ideologically obsessed had placed Bishop under house arrest and, by extension, the demise of a once passionately hailed "revo".
OECS leaders were violating the letter and spirit of Article 8 of the OECS Treaty (according to legal experts in and outside of the Caribbean) at an October 21 meeting in Barbados (not a member of the OECS) to provide President Reagan with a political fig leaf for US military intervention in Grenada; he had already finalised plans for the infamy of "Urgent Fury".
When the now late Dominica Prime Minister Dame Eugenia Charles stood alongside President Reagan on the steps of the White House on that morning of October 25, 1983, the invasion was well underway.
It lacked credibility of an "authorised" OECS request, and crocodile tears were being shed for the murdered Bishop whose back Washington and its regional allies was anxious to see.
Work permit backlash
As editor of Caribbean Contact, then a monthly newspaper of the Caribbean Conference of Churches (CCC), I reported for its November edition on "Grenada's nightmare - the US invasion that followed bloody betrayal of a people's revolution".
A few days earlier, on October 25 (the day of the invasion), I had written for the Barbados Nation special evening paper, at the request of then Editor-in-Chief Harold Hoyte, an article titled "Invasion cannot be justified".
I did so in my capacity as editor of Contact and examined the implications for Caribbean sovereignty and unity.
Subsequently, I did a post-invasion series of articles, including one that took issue with then Prime Minister Tom Adams on the accuracy of the sequence of events prior to the execution of Bishop and the US invasion.
Before the following December edition of Contact could be completed for printing, my work permit was suddenly revoked - 20 months prior to when it was due to expire.
That development led then CCC's general secretary, Rev Allan Kirton, to write as Contact's guest editor the article titled "End of a decade -end of an era", in which he lamented the Grenadian tragedies of killings and military invasion. One of the very significant regional political voices against the Grenada invasion and revocation of my work permit was that of the now late Errol Barrow, then leader of the opposition Democratic Labour Party.
A few months prior to the invasion, Barrow had spoken critically of what he perceived as preparations by Barbados for likely military action.
When Reagan's "Urgent Fury" became a reality on October 25, 1983, Barrow, who became prime minister in 1986, was to make the caustic observation when he denounced claims of security threats to Caribbean sovereignty and that the only real fear of such a threat was an invasion from the USA.
Now, 26 years after the PRG's self-destruction, the slaughter at Fort Rupert, the imprisonment and release of those convicted for killing Bishop, close party and cabinet colleagues, among them the pregnant education minister Jackie Creft, there remain some very outstanding matters. Among them:
. The refusal, or failure, by US authorities to return to Grenada valuable archival materials such as the tons of documents which they removed that belong to the Grenadian people and mark a traumatic period in their history.
The period would extend from the political culture of 'Gairyism' that led to the rise, by a coup, of the PRG; the vicious internal conflicts within the party and government; the concentrated focus by the USA and some Caricom governments to undermine the PRG to the setting of the stage for Reagan's "Urgent Fury" to ostensibly prevent the growth of an "international communist conspiracy".
On the more humane side, Alimenta Bishop - mother of the slain prime minister - whose husband was killed during a protest demonstration against Eric Gairy's dictatorial style of rule, has never had an answer to her frequent tearful pleas, both to successive administrations in Washington and St George's, for the return of her son's remains.
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