Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing for a per­ma­nent memo­r­i­al to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, say­ing the na­tion must pre­serve the mem­o­ry of that dark chap­ter and the lives lost.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day to mark the 35th an­niver­sary, Beck­les said the events of Ju­ly 27, 1990, de­serve “a mu­se­um-qual­i­ty dis­play cap­tur­ing the hor­ror and chaos of those six days, re­plete with poignant im­ages, heart­felt tes­ti­mo­ni­als, and his­tor­i­cal con­text”. She said such a trib­ute would ed­u­cate fu­ture gen­er­a­tions about the caus­es and con­se­quences of the in­sur­rec­tion.

Beck­les re­called how “a group of heav­i­ly armed in­sur­rec­tion­ists stormed the na­tion’s seat of democ­ra­cy, their in­ten­tions shroud­ed in chaos and ter­ror”, and how many cit­i­zens, watch­ing the events un­fold live, were ini­tial­ly un­sure whether it was re­al.

She paid trib­ute to the 24 peo­ple killed, in­clud­ing MP Leo des Vi­gnes, SRP Solomon McLeod, ASP Roger George, and Es­tate Con­sta­ble Mal­colm Bas­an­ta, along with civil­ians such as George Fran­cis, Lor­raine Ca­ballero, and Mervyn Teague. “Their sac­ri­fices must be re­mem­bered and re­spect­ed,” she said.

Beck­les said the 1990 coup at­tempt left many cit­i­zens phys­i­cal­ly, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, and emo­tion­al­ly scarred, while al­so deep­en­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic strug­gles. “Busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, faced tur­moil as the shad­ows of the coup ex­tend­ed across the coun­try,” she said.