British Guiana: Working to Divide

BRITISH GUIANA

Premier Cheddi Jagan's government last week washed its hands of all responsibility for maintaining law and order in the strife-torn South American colony. In a teary speech to British Guiana's Senate, Janet Rosenberg Jagan, 43, Cheddi's Chicago-born, Communist-sworn wife, announced her resignation as Minister of Home Affairs after a year in the job; Janet accused her own cops of racism and sabotage, charged that the 90% Negro force is bitterly anti-Jagan, has done nothing to halt persecution of the country's Jagan-supporting East Indians.

Actually, British Guiana's Marxist husband and wife team have themselves busily stirred up racial trouble by calling on East Indians to support "to the death" Cheddi's demand for immediate independence from Britain. And they contributed mightily to the current flare-up by calling East Indian sugar workers out on a strike during which nonstriking Negro field hands were beaten and murdered. Negroes have fled from heavily East Indian villages, and streams of East Indians from Negro-dominated areas have poured into refugee camps near the Georgetown capital. The prospect is for further polarization and violence.