Georgetown: Prime Minister Samuel Hinds Thursday announced that an International Commission of Inquiry is to be set up to determine the circumstances surrounding the death of renowned Academic and Historian Dr Walter Rodney.
This revelation comes on the heels on Dr. Rodney’s 33rd death anniversary, which is being observed today.
This was disclosed during the sitting of the National Assembly by the government. President Donald Ramotar has approved the establishment of an international commission of inquiry. The announcement was also made earlier in the day by Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon at his post cabinet media briefing.
Luncheon noted that the family of Dr. Rodney has presented substantial arguments for the matter to be inquired.
WPA executive member, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine welcomed the announcement by Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon but said it will not be an easy task for the commission .
Government has not yet named the commissioners. Roopnaraine hoped that the WPA and Rodney’s family would be consulted by government about the terms of reference for the probe team
The WPA has since joined with the opposition Peoples National Congress Reform (PNCR) in a coalition. This PNC/R had been blamed for Rodney’s assassination under the then Forbes Burnham government.
In 1974 Rodney returned to Guyana from Tanzania. He was due to take up a position as a professor at the University of Guyana but the government prevented his appointment. He became increasingly active in politics, founding the Working People's Alliance (WPA), a party that provided the most effective and credible opposition to the PNC government. In 1979 he was arrested and charged with arson after two government offices were burned.
On 13 June 1980, Walter Rodney at the age of thirty-eight was killed by a bomb in his car, a month after returning from the independence celebrations in Zimbabwe and during a period of intense political activism. He was survived by his wife, Pat, and three children. His brother, Donald Rodney, who was injured in the explosion, said that a sergeant in the Guyana Defence Force named Gregory Smith had given Walter the bomb that killed him. After the killing Smith fled to French Guiana, where he died in 2002.
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