Walter Rodney’s tomb, memorial now officially national monuments

The resting place for Guyanese political activist and distinguished professor, the late Dr. Walter Rodney in the Le Repentir Cemetery, Georgetown has officially been declared a national monument.

According to a June 04, 2022 publication in the Official Gazette, the tomb, comprising just about 0.002 acres, has been declared by the National Trust a national monument.

Work is currently ongoing to transform and beautify the area.

Additionally, the Walter Rodney Memorial on Hadfield Street, Georgetown has also been declared a national monument.

It comes some 42 years after his death and forms part of measures to honour Rodney’s life and remove and expunge all public records that imitate any level of guilt or wrongdoing by Dr Rodney in relation to the June 13, 1980 tragedy which claimed his life.

The Rodney Gravesite and Memorial was previously managed collaboratively between the Rodney family and the National Trust but now that it has been declared a national monument, it falls fully under the administration of the National Trust.

In June 2021, the Irfaan Ali-led government passed a motion in the National Assembly to adopt and implement the recommendations from the 2014 Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report into the assassination of Dr Rodney.

In addition to declaring Dr Rodney’s graveside a national monument, his death certificate would be corrected to read “professor” instead of “unemployed” and that his cause of death would change from “misadventure” to assassination.”

The Walter Rodney Chair at the University of Guyana is also to be re-established.

June 13, 2022, will mark the 42nd death anniversary of Dr Rodney.

An inquest was conducted eight years after Dr. Rodney’s death and the findings were that he died by “misadventure.” This inquest was reviewed by the 2014 Commission of Inquiry and found to be incredible, flawed and dubious.

The current steps by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government are to invalidate or set aside the perverse findings of that inquest.