(via globalvoicesonline.org)

David de Caires, the founder and editor-in-chief of the independent Guyanese newspaper the Stabroek News, and one of the Caribbean’s strongest advocates for press freedom, died on Saturday 1 November. As the news spread across the Caribbean and the Guyanese diaspora, there was an outpouring of tributes to the man who led the way to the re-establishment of the independent press in 1980s Guyana and thereby contributed to the return of democracy in the following decade. As the Stabroek News reminded its readers in an editorial yesterday, “the newspaper entered into a world where freedom of the press had been denied for ten years, and it played a major part in opening up the society.”