The Editor, Sir:

The Jamaican people ought to call upon the British Government to rebuild the Stony Gut community in St. Thomas, which was totally destroyed by their armed forces in October 1865.

We must never rest until we witness compensation for the atrocities committed by those who today are in Iraq, on the pretext that they are championing the cause of a suffering people, when they left our people in October 1865 in squalor and poverty.

The people of Stony Gut and elsewhere in St. Thomas were not poisoned with gas as is alleged against Saddam but they suffered the same fate, death by a dictatorial government.

So on behalf of the mothers, children and fathers of 1865, we call upon this empire to pay for the destruction they wrought upon an innocent and defenceless people and make good the loss suffered and rebuild Stony Gut.

Their governor was the agent of British terror, whose deaf ear to the cry of our people, subjected to colonial tyranny, led to the execution of Bogle, who tried peaceful means without avail and extended to the mulatto Gordon, who was nowhere near the resistance but was made to pay the ultimate price and suffered death.

The voice for compensation is but the voice of the Honourable Bogle, crying from his unknown and dishonoured grave.

I am, etc.,

BERT S. SAMUELS

bianca@cwjamaica.com