January 17, 2002
JAMAICANS UNITED AGAINST
POLICE BRUTALITY
Dear Friends,
Jamaica recorded 1,138 murders last
year and 47 since the beginning of this year. Less than 50% of murders
over the past three years have been cleared up by the police and even those
deemed solved are questionable since the public must accept the word
of the police that those whom they execute extrajudicially are murderers.
(The police killed 148 in 2001)
Jamaica is scheduled to have national
elections this year and plans recently unveiled by the minister of national
security Peter Philips and Edward Seaga, leader of the opposition
Jamaica Labour Party, indicate that the campaign has officially began.
The issue of crime and violence is the key plank in their campaigns.
For Phillips escalating gang violence
is seen as a threat to the ‘very survival of the state.' With this
concern for survival ("the consequences of failure are too catastrophic
to contemplate") the minister's 12-point crime plan is designed first and
foremost to give the state a fighting chance for survival.
Absent from the minister's plan, however,
is any consideration for the connection between poverty and crime. There
is no mention of chronic unemployment that plagues the land especially
among the youth; the particularly poor housing and sanitary conditions
in the inner cities; lack of recreational facilities; the failing educational
system; the alienation, general frustration and lack of hope which afflicts
a large majority of Jamaicans. Unable to address these problems the minister
failed to give a convincing argument as to why increased state or
police powers will solve the problem of crime and violence or even
why the state as presently constituted deserves to survive.
Phillips chose instead to give the impression
that it is drug trafficking which is the cause of crime and violence.
He was echoed on this point of view by Seaga.
The state is therefore to acquire new
boats for increase border patrols and even electronic devices for the ports
in order to stem the inflow of guns and drugs.
Putting aside hollow sounding platitudes
about no one being above the law, the minister skirted the problem of the
connection between the two main political parties with the trafficking
in guns and drugs and hence state protection for the traffickers. With
the political status quo unchanged, i.e., the same people having access
to state power, how is corruption of any new system to be avoided?
Silence is also the word on the known
relationship between murderous gangs and the political parties, a
connection which is especially strong at this time of impending national
elections. As representative of a garrison community, for example,
the security minister must win his seat if he is to remain in the hustings
to become the next prime minister. (In the same vein,
Seaga, who is representative of the
Tivoli garrison says little about political party connection with drugs,
guns, gangs and violence.)
How then, will new armored vehicles
and a new strike force, as promised, prevent such gangs from creating mayhem
as a means of securing party control over particular constituencies? How
will drive by shootings and assassinations under the cover of darkness
be prevented?
Phillips' preoccupation with the survival
of the state (similar to that of Seaga) prevents acknowledgment that
brutal police methods run counter to the development of and reliance
on investigative and forensic skills.
The fact that Phillips has decided
to keep the Crime Management Unit in place, though there is little public
doubt that it is a death squad, is the clearest signal that police executions
will continue. (Nor did Seaga address this issue in his crime plan. Seaga's
present concern with human rights abuses and police brutality seem to extend
only in so far as it affects his
Tivoli Gardens stronghold. No accident
therefore that his government presided over a record number of police killings
during the eighties.)
The minister made it plain that stops
and searches (which are conducted in an unconstitutional manner) will continue
and even expanded. And if the experiences of other countries are to be
considered his proposed antiterrorism legislation is likely to further
erode civil liberties. (Seaga wants "terrorists" and "narco traffickers"
to face the death penalty. Unfortunately he didn't define either
concept so that the unemployed woman who smuggles drugs in her body cavities
may very well find herself facing the hangman's noose. And what
about the politicians connected to political gangs -- are they terrorists
as well?)
Phillips and Seaga, in concert, appear
desperately to be putting on a show in order to buy time for a failed state
and a bankrupt political order. How much longer will they be allowed to
bore us to death with a rather boring show?
Lloyd D'Aguilar
Coordinator
Jamaicans United
Against Police Brutality
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