The Tribune

“Grant that I may not criticise my neighbour until I have walked a mile in his moccasins,” says an old Indian prayer.

Today we invite Bahamians, before they condemn him, to walk a mile in the shoes of 30-year-old Anson Aly, a Bahamian of Haitian descent.

On Friday, October 17, Aly watched in despair as a government tractor ploughed through a shanty town, crushing the shack that he once called home and destroying his few worldly possessions. He was not the only one to suffer. His neighbours, themselves squatters, also lost their homes in a demolition order to remove the shanty town located just off Farrington Road.

“Where they want the people them go?” Aly asked in a radio interview during which he described the desolate scene and vented his emotions. He pointed out that incidents like this “force people to do bad things on the streets.”

He told the reporter interviewing him that tearing down communities like his could lead to reprisals from the Haitian community. He added that Bahamians were outnumbered by Haitian Bahamians and cautioned Bahamians not to start something they cannot finish. In anger he commented that he felt like putting a “Colombian necktie” on some people — slang for cutting someone’s throat.

Now let’s invite a Bahamian to step into Mr Aly’s shoes. What Mr Aly said was undoubtedly ill advised, but if our Bahamian had had to stand on the sidelines as a government tractor destroyed all his worldly possessions, he probably would have reacted as did Mr Aly. Undoubtedly his comments of condemnation and threats would have been even more violent.

A Bahamian commenting on Mr Aly’s situation, said that Haitians who live in this country should demonstrate more loyalty to the Bahamas. Mr Aly, in fact, is a Bahamian, but because of his Haitian background, he, like many Bahamian-Haitians have not been fully accepted by his Bahamian brothers. Unless, Bahamians fully accept these persons as citizens of this country, Bahamians, in not too many years to come, will be the architects of their own unhappy fate. As Mr Aly said in his later apology to the Bahamian people for using such threatening words:

“I want all the Bahamians, everybody ... Haitian or whatever come together as one community. I don’t want the people (to) take it wrong, what I said. I don’t want you to take it to heart, because I am a Bahamian citizen. I never been (to) Haiti in my life. I born here. I am a certified painter and a certified mechanic.

“I want to apologise to everyone who took it the wrong way. Everybody around the Bahamian islands and everybody else that was upset and thinking, yeah, I mean a war or a threat. It wasn’t like what y’all think it was. No one was on my side because I was wrong. So I can take my wrong. I apologise to the public and everyone else.

“I want all of we Bahamians, Haitians (and) Bahamians of Haitian descent, I want all of us to come as one,” he added.

If Bahamians were wise they would accept a brother’s extended hand in friendship. Bahamian-Haitians need to be embraced by the community, not shunned.

For years Bahamians have lived in fear of Haitians taking over the Bahamas. This could only happen if Bahamians allowed it to happen. Many Bahamians over the years have complained of overcrowding in the schools because of too many Haitian children. However, the main grumble is that Haitian students generally top the class, and win the academic awards. It isn’t because a Haitian child is smarter than a Bahamian. The truth is that many Bahamian parents do not take an interest in their children’s school work — only raising a rumpus with the teachers when their child doesn’t get better grades. And, of course, without that extra parental interest, Bahamian children believe they should top their class with little work. Many bring this same attitude to the job site. Come graduation many parents get angry with the school when their child leaves, not with a diploma, but a piece of paper that confirms that he/she was at least present for daily role call.

Ever since our last visit to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) almost 50 years ago we have had growing concerns about the Bahamian-Haitian problem, which could end – like Sri Lanka — in catastrophe. Even today Sri Lanka is neither a safe, nor happy island.

After 500 years of British colonial rule, Sri Lanka became an independent state in 1948. Since then there has been nothing but conflict, leading to a bloody civil war, between the Sinhalese and the Tamils with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) emerging as one of the world’s most feared and effective paramilitary organisations.

We shall quote a section from Sri Lanka’s history for Bahamians to understand the path the Bahamas is now taking.

“1948-1949- The new Sri Lankan government passed anti-Tamil legislation. The Ceylon Citizenship Act denied citizenship to Tamils of Indian origin (roughly 800,000 indentured labourers brought by the British from south India to work on rubber, tea and coffee estates when the majority Sinhalese refused to work on foreign-owned plantations). The Tamils had been looked down upon not only by the Sinhalese, but also by the minority indigenous Tamils (who had been over represented in the Christian elite of administrators and clerks that the British had recruited to run the country). The Ceylon Amendment Act disfranchised plantation Tamils, dropping the proportion of Tamils with voting power in the new legislature.

”The country’s ethnic and religious conflicts escalated as competition for wealth and work intensified in the newly independent country. The Sinhalese, who felt resentful of their place under the British, wanted to reassert their culture, language, schools and Buddhist religion.

“In 1956 the Sinhala Only Official Languages Act was passed, making Sinhalese the national language and effectively reserving the best jobs for the Sinhalese. This ‘Sinhala only’ law was partly designed to address the imbalance of power between the majority Sinhalese and the English-speaking, Christian-educated elite. When the bill was introduced, Tamil political leaders were attacked in a four-day riot that left more than 100 Tamils dead. The law limited the education and work opportunities for many Tamil youth. As a result, the Tamil Hindu minority started to push for a federal system of government with greater autonomy in the mainly Tamil areas in the north and east.”

The Singhalese continued to push the Tamils to the wall until the LTTE was formed and the country erupted into a bitter and bloody civil war.

If Bahamians become second class citizens in their own country, they, with their government, will only have themselves to blame.

Now is the time to remember that we all belong to the human family, regardless of differing backgrounds and beliefs. We either rise or fall together.

Only good sense and Christian compassion can save the Bahamas in this human dilemma.