Cecil GutzmoreTHE EUROPEAN Court last week found the Government of United Kingdom guilty of unjustifiably depriving 10 persons of an inalienable near absolute even human right. That is their right to life. The Court ordered that the families of the deceased should each receive token compensation of US$15,000 from Her Britannic Majesty's Government. This case holds lessons the Government, state and some of the people of Jamaica must (re-)learn.
It concerned the fatal shooting of 10 Irish Republican Army (IRA) men. When their lives were snuffed out these men were undeniably engaged in terrorist activities in pursuit of their view of Irish freedom and unity. Eight of the 10 were shot dead during a single anti-terrorist operation by British Crown Forces in Northern Ireland. It appears to have been common ground between the parties that these eight IRA men belonged to what the IRA calls an "active service unit." It was directly engaged in the terrorist activity of (a) detonating a seriously large explosive device (bomb) outside a British security post and (b) lying in wait to shoot down British Army and/or Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) personnel escaping the blast.
British intelligence uncovered this ghastly and illegal IRA plan. An ambush was accordingly laid and all eight of the IRA men were shot dead instead of being captured alive as there was abundant opportunity to do. On these facts, the European Court found the British Government guilty of depriving these IRA terrorists of their right to life.
The relevance to Jamaica of this European Court case is that the outcome was based on international (not First World) standards of human rights and the rule of law. These are the standards that Jamaican, British and all other security forces are bound to uphold in all circumstances.
Jamaica's Government and people face a crime problem not a terrorist threat. Available evidence suggests that at Braeton Phase III on March 14, 2001 the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) squad under Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams lost touch with both international and national law. The Crime Management Unit arranged to be led to some youths in a Braeton house. If at all armed, these youth were only very poorly so. They were not terrorists. Against some of them stood a vague and now legally un-provable allegation of criminal involvement.
There lies the question of international human rights law and of Jamaican domestic law: Why did the police shoot down the Braeton Seven in the manner confirmed by the report of international pathologist, Dr. Leth's official observation of their post-mortems?
American or Jamaican solutions?
Last week also the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica (AMCHAM) finally made available to little Jamaicans, for my big big $2000 each, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) report entitled Violent Crime and Murder Reduction in Kingston completed months earlier. It is a disturbingly history-free document. No one reading it will find out how it really came about.
Nor will they know that when PERF was brought in what we Jamaicans should really have been doing and still need now to do was to be paying really serious critical national attention to a new book, Police and Crime Control in Jamaica: Problems of Reforming Ex-Colonial Constabu-laries by Dr. Anthony Harriott published by the University of the West Indies Press in August 2000 and to the old Wolfe Report published roughly a decade ago. Why? Because they both reflect the fruits of serious local research into crime, policing and justice in Jamaica. And it is precisely answers so based that represent both what is needed and what we are so very good at ignoring, at failing to implement.
The Jamaican nationalists/patriots most vociferous in attacking Amnesty International (AI) for allegedly "interfering in Jamaica's internal affairs", "dissing Jamaicans" had no difficulty whatever in welcoming PERF, even though its foreign experts spent little time here, it has brought remarkably little new, it exudes no sense of Jamaican policing-crime history and is proposing solutions culled wholesale from US, especially New York policing experience.
As PERF itself says: "Jamaica is not the USA." In July and August 2000, coinciding with and overshadowing publication of Dr. Harriott's book, there was what might be variously called a media ramp, a law and order scare, a hue and cry, or a moral panic about serious crime in Jamaica especially murder. The message was that these were spiralling out of control and that "something must be done." Many of the uptown and big man institutions joined in. When the dust settled Jamaica's outrageously high annual murder rate was broadly in line with the previous year and, statistically, serious crime was no higher.
The key lesson of the Wolfe Report and Dr. Harriott's book is that concrete social and crime-solving benefits can only flow from (a) local research and (b) respect for the rule of law, civil liberties and justice. Harriott shows that it was during the period of Colonel. MacMillan's leadership of the JCF, when the rules governing police shooting of civilians as contained in Force Standing Orders were most in keeping with international standards, that public trust in the JCF was rising, and that the numbers alike of its members killed and those they killed declined.
We have to revisit this site with the help of Wolfe and Harriott and with greater Jamaican Government commitment to it than was demonstrated last time.
Cecil Gutzmore is a research student and lecturer at the University of the West Indies. E-mail:
gutzmorecr@hotmail.com
