A/HRC/10/11/Add.2 page 8 discovery of gold and bauxite, Africans also moved into the growing prospecting and mining sectors in Guyana’s interior, establishing new towns of predominantly African population such as Linden. 12. Indian communities grew quickly and accumulated substantial “primitive” capital, which they used to educate their children in Guyana and abroad, and to acquire land. A new, educated and politically active Indian generation emerged, increasingly in urban areas that had previously been predominantly Afro-Guyanese. Indian capital was also used to buy and establish small businesses and property, while many educated Indo-Guyanese also began to practise law. Approaching the end of the colonial era, Guyana was a multi-ethnic society, albeit one already demonstrating ethnic fault lines based on the divisions of the past and developing inequalities. 13. Opposition to British colonial rule, however, gave them reason to unite politically. Leaders from both Indian and African ethnic groups, including Forbes Burnham and Dr. Cheddi Jagan, aligned to create the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in January 1950. In 1953, under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, the PPP claimed power in the first general elections under universal adult suffrage permitted by the colonial British government. However, according to numerous commentators, in the cold war climate Jagan’s Marxist/Leninist views caused suspicion in Britain and Washington.8 Five months after it was elected, the British suspended the constitution of Guyana, and deposed the PPP government, enforcing the move with British troops and appointing an interim government. 14. The PPP was denied the opportunity to function as a government of national unity representing working class, urban and rural, Indo- and Afro-Guyanese communities. Influenced and manipulated by internal and external forces and colonial interests, the PPP split along ethnic lines with respective sides each appealing directly to their ethnic support base. Burnham founded what eventually became the People’s National Congress (PNC). Indo- and Afro-Guyanese now became deeply politically divided as the struggle for political power became ever more salient with the prospect of independence. In 1957, the Guyanese Constitution was partially restored. Both pre-independence elections in 1957 and 1961 were won by the PPP under Dr. Jagan. 15. The early 1960s saw a period of unprecedented social unrest and rioting and the increasing entrenchment of political and ethnic polarization. Amid external manipulation by the United States and Britain, including accusations of CIA activities against the PPP government, in 1963 an 80-day general strike was instigated by the predominantly Afro-Guyanese Trades Union Congress and the PNC. The PPP and PNC largely blame each other for the violence of the time, the PPP noting coordinated agitation and attacks against its supporters, and the PNC describing a PPP sponsored “terror campaign”. Several hundred people are thought to have died during this period of social unrest, one of the darkest periods of modern Guyanese history, in which much of Georgetown’s commercial district was burned. The current Government notes 8 The PPP’s legislative programme included repeal of the Undesirable Publications Ordinance and passage of a Labour Relations Bill, both seen by the British as part of a wider communist agenda.