'We expect calm' - Police, PSOJ hope for normality today - Prime Minister to meet business leaders

By Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate Editor

THE TOP Brass of Jamaica's private sector yesterday abandoned their executive suites and for three hours made a fact-finding tour of troubled inner-city areas of West Kingston as they move to formulate plans to restore peace and normality in the city.

After the tour and following a meeting with police chief Francis Forbes, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) said it expects calm to return to the city today, a position supported by the police.

"However, to sustain and enhance this stability, we believe that increased communication between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition is imperative," the PSOJ said in a statement last night.

The statement said that private sector leaders will meet with Prime Minister P.J. Patterson today.

Yesterday, several roads in sections of the Corporate Area and some rural parishes remained blocked as residents continued their protest against the violence in western Kingston which has claimed the lives of at least 25 persons since Saturday.

In Manchester, barricades were reported in Christiana, Grey Ground, Hatfield, Mandeville, Mile Gully and Craig Head. In St. Thomas, three persons were arrested for their role in blocking the main road in Morant Bay. Over in St. Catherine, there were roadblocks in Homestead, Tawes Pen, sections of Shelter Rock and Spanish Town.

The visit to western Kingston yesterday, conducted by Edward Seaga, Member of Parliament for the last 39 years and leader of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), provided an opportunity for some residents to leave their homes for the first time since Saturday. Many claimed that when they ventured in the streets to go to work or to shop for food, soldiers shoot at them, beat them or threatened them.

Many people, old women among them, said they were starving as they hadn't been able to shop for food these last four days, the Coronation Market having closed because of the violence and shops in the area and elsewhere being unable to open.

They can't leave their community for fear of being shot at by sniper soldier, some said. Mercedes James, 59, of 60 1/2 Oxford Street and her aunt Enid Lewis, 70, said they hadn't eaten for days as they had been unable to get out since Saturday.

"I live at Bond Street, right at the new house them and the soldiers say they give the whole of we one hour to go look food," a female resident said. "From Saturday we inside and can't come out. Every minute you hear pure shot and you can't see what them a fire after. If dog run them fire gunshot."

PSOJ president Peter Moses told The Gleaner after the tour: "The impact of this (the tour) is very strong. You see various things. Obviously you see the devastation of the violence that has taken place over the last couple of weeks. You see a people who are looking a bit lost. They look fearful. They look as if they are in despair, looking for hope. Looking for a way out.

Severely depressing

"The conditions are severely depressing in terms of what they have to live in. You see some of the houses that have been burnt out, but if you look behind the burnt-out at what must have been there before, even though people would call these homes, it really is unacceptable that people were living in conditions like this.

"I think the obvious intention first is to try and bring back a level of sustainable calm. And then the country has to work together and try to get rid of these frightening situations."

He said he was not saying that western Kingston was the only area that had that kind of problem, "but it really is going to take a united country to deal with problems like this, something that has eluded us for a while."

Mr. Seaga said the meeting and tour with private sector leaders were intended to set an agenda for discussion with the PSOJ, the Government and the Opposition and he had committed himself to accepting the agenda stated by the PSOJ after the fact-finding tour.

The touring party left out in two air-conditioned buses and other vehicles from the headquarters of the PSOJ on Old Hope Road, St. Andrew. But any notion of a run-of-the-mill sightseeing was shattered at their first stop -- Darling Street, across from the Command Centre, now manned by the JDF. In a lane off it, was the body of an old man said to have been killed by soldiers firing from the Command Centre on Saturday. The body was removed by Madden's Funeral Parlour a few minutes after the tour stopped there.

The presence of bodies still on the street of West Kingston yesterday morning gave the lie to the body count offered on the weekend by the security forces.

Cover-up

According to Mr. Seaga, it was a deliberate cover-up by the security forces to hide the atrocities they were committing, so they deliberately wanted to keep the body count low. For instance, Mr. Seaga said, when the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN) said four people had died, the actual figure was 11 and when they said it was seven, the true figure was 21.

In its statement last night, the PSOJ urged the authorities "to perform the post-mortem examinations on those killed firstly to establish the cause of death so that justice can run its course and secondly to allow the bereaved families to make the necessary funeral arrangements."

On Bond Street, householders peeped out from their doors or windows. The brave dared go to their gates. Prisoners in their yards. A woman ducked and ran at the sight of the long lens of a camera, apparently mistaking it for the muzzle of a gun.

The touring party was the happiest sight Lenworth Bolt, a grandfather, had seen since Saturday, when police and soldiers moved into the area. He said he hadn't been able to go to his house at No. 11B before the touring party came. He hurriedly opened his front door only to complain that his house had been shot up by soldiers from across the Command Centre. Mr. Bolt, who said he had been living there for 49 years -- since 1952 -- expressed relief that he hadn't been home.

The PSOJ tour brought to the hitherto empty streets, scores of people who said they had been unable to venture out since Saturday.

A woman runs up to a man and hugs him. "Bully", she asked, "how me hear say you dead?" An answer was not necessary.

Deserted

A little up the road where Bustamante Highway, Darling Street and Spanish Town Road meet, teems with pedestrian and vehicular traffic at 11 o'clock on any morning. A footwalker has to jostle to get through. Yesterday it was deserted until the party arrived. Mr. Seaga said six bodies had been picked up there. Two MPM trucks, disabled were parked, apparently abandoned.

Emboldened by the sight of the touring party, and Mr. Seaga, in particular, dozens of people who said they were being "penned in" and kept virtual prisoners by the soldiers, came out to voice their complaints: "Hungry"; "Can't go on the street without being shot at"; "Can't get to shop for food."

But they and other residents of the other communities visited, came out in trepidation. Even while the party was on spot, they said soldiers and police had threatened to beat them after the touring party had left. A V150 JDF armoured cars and soldiers lurked in the background.

That refrain, "We hungry", "We starving", "We can't get nothing to eat", was heard everywhere throughout the tour.

Some, during the trip from Denham Town to Tivoli Gardens walked alongside the tour vehicles chanting, "We want freedom."

Anxiety

Coupled with this was the anxiety expressed by women about their menfolk who had been detained by soldiers. They said that when they tried to find out where they were, the police and soldiers threatened and insulted them.

The complaint about hunger was as constant as the makeshift roadblocks the citizens had to move to allow the tour vehicles to go through and which they put back as they past.

According to Mr. Seaga, with what was happening in his constituency and the powers given by the Government to the Jamaica Defence Force on Monday, "What we have is a state of emergency without a state of emergency being invoked.

Prisoners

What they are doing is illegally imposing powers and imposing restrictions and regulations which we are going to deal with. They are keeping the people corralled in their homes. They are not allowed to move, they are not allowed to go anywhere. They are prisoners in their own homes. They can't go to the shop. What you see as a crowd here is only because we are here. When we leave they will have to flee back into their homes."

Mr. Seaga said the soldiers were detaining people for more than 12 hours and the JLP intended to make an issue of it in the courts. But he said the courts were not a way to deal with it when people were hungry and need medicine.

The PSOJ requested permission to visit the Command Centre being manned by the JDF, but the ground commander, after consultation by cellular phone, reported that permission was denied.

The tour took in the border between Rema and Denham Town where there was no problem two weeks ago, Mr. Seaga said.

The tour ended happily for some people in Tivoli Gardens as a minivan laden with parcels of flour, sugar, rice and other staples, made a visit, courtesy of Bishop Royston Braham of Seven Miles, Bull Bay, St. Andrew.

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