'A former Governor asked me to break the law!' - Edmund G. Maduro
Mr. Maduro was speaking about the ongoing issue of property owners restricting access to beaches near their properties and likened this to racial discrimination.
He said that this is something that is against the laws of the Territory and that elected officials must do something about it.
He said that the putting up of the signs along beaches are not unlike what took place in places in the southern United States during the dark days of segregation.
“I am extremely unhappy with what is going on in the British Virgin Islands. These signs are preventing you and me and everybody and many other persons from using our beaches. “Is this any different from the signs stuck up to the entrances of bars in Georgia,” he asked, referring to signs which barred blacks from entering certain establishments especially in the American South.
“I seriously ask you to look at where our leaders have brought us. Is the selling out of our islands one by one the right way in which our leaders should take us?” he asked.
He said that during his research he found that Jim Crow laws were present in the US for about 80 years in a majority of American States. “These laws were designed to punish the black man for living with whites,” he said.
“It is time for the BVI to have a dream just like Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. I call on the honourable Minister for Natural Resources and Labour [Dr the Hon Kedrick D. Pickering] to remove these ugly signs at Smugglers’ Cove West End and Long Bay Beef Island and all other man made barriers restricting access to our beaches in Virgin Gorda, Beef Island and Tortola," he said.
Continuing to allude to discrimination, Maduro recalled that while he was the Chief Immigration Officer for 20 years, the Governor at that time wanted him to do something contrary to the laws of the Virgin Islands.
“I was pushed out of Immigration because I would not discriminate against a black man. When I was asked by His Excellency the Governor to recommend his deportation I refused to do it. I took no action whatsoever. Six months later he called me to asked whether I did not ask me to do ‘so and so’. I said Your Excellency, please put your request in writing,” he said. He said the incident was around 1989.
“I took another six months and inquired into every place that man lives and I got nothing negative against that man, and I wrote a six page letter to the Governor [to say this],” he said. “He has committed no offence and on these grounds I cannot recommend to you that you deport this man,” said Maduro in response to the then Governor.
He said that he was taken to court by the Attorney General at the time for extending the man’s stay in the VI. “I was so happy when I got there, the Magistrate said to them [they] have no case,” he said.
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25 Responses to “'A former Governor asked me to break the law!' - Edmund G. Maduro”
More crazies. Jim Crow in the BVI. BVI people don't discriminate or treat down islanders bad, no sah. BVI people are the victims. Boo hoo hoo. Cry a f...ing river and flood road town Edmund. You are f...ing sick!
If you honestly think Virgin Islanders are more "community minded and less materialistic" than persons from other countries, you need a reality check mehson. The last time I went to a community meeting, which wasn't very long ago, materialism and the gimme gimme syndrome was in fine form!
BVI values you say? What does that even mean?
You are inciting racism.
Finding someone to blame is not the same as finding a solution to the problems we really face.
I never seen a sign in the BVI saying "No Blacks" or "No locals". And I here all my living days.
Why are you so interested in turning our islands into a place of Us and Them? How will that make BVIslanders' lives better?
We need to make smart laws so locals don't lose out, but we locals got to compete, be imaginative, maybe even change some of our cultural habits to adapt to this real, internationalized world.
Those are the hard, but right things for us to do.
You and your British Victim Islander friends are taking a path that feels easy, but goes over a cliff.
"C O R R U P T I O N"
It ain't the leaders selling out the land it the greedy BVIslander who wants fast money and no work. Most would sell their daddys grave plot for a few bucks if they had the chance.