Emancipation from violence

Roderick R. Hewitt

IT IS very easy for collective amnesia to set in the Jamaican psyche soon after the catastrophic events in Western Kingston. Our schizophrenic national identity can easily delude us in believing that things have returned to 'normal'. We have become so used to mood swings.

One day we lose our senses kill close to 30 members of our family, burn one beyond recognition, others are left to decay on the streets and the next day we return to 'business as usual'.

The pervasive nature of violence in our society is so entrenched that it cannot be wished away by pronouncements or 'one-off prayer meeting'. We must not allow ourselves to give in to hasty peace that is only 'skin deep'. No amount of band-aid measures will heal the deep wounds of violence in our society. The rupture requires surgery because we have been damaging one another for so long without being called to account for our wrongdoings! Ginalism has become our national ideology. We trick and deceive each other without impunity. The crucial question that every Jamaican must answer is: How do we face up to and cope with the forces of destruction and violence in our own lives and the wider society?

Jamaican history since the arrival of Europeans has experienced politically and religiously legitimised violence. Politics and religion have played sometimes a destructive and sometimes a constructive role in the development of the Jamaican society. The Jamaican identity is a derivative of this contradictory mix of religion and politics, which, since the days of slavery, has been instrumental in nurturing alienation and the irreconcilability among our diverse communities rather than mercy, compassion, forgiveness and acceptance.

Our society is saturated with lots of unforgiven sins that have not been owned up but rather covered up. We have countless unsolved murders with the perpetrators walking free, protected by families and communities. We have had numerous national scandals where politicians and police officers are involved and we are still waiting for justice to take its course. They are protected by what appears to be an ineffective judicial system that allows lawyers who can manipulate the system in order to deny justice being achieved.

The perennial talk in our society for equal rights and justice is symptomatic of the deep need for truth-telling and forgiveness. Hurting people in local communities have being waiting to hear the words "I am sorry" from persons who have used their political, economic and religious power to cause violence.

The violence that we observe in our inner-city communities is a painful reflection of the disease in the wider society. Whatever were the reasons that contributed to the creation of garrison communities, they are sustained today by the desire of the wider society making them into scapegoats for all the social ills of the nation. The wider society benefits from the violence of scapegoating garrison communities. They become the communities that we love to hate and wish they did not exist because they encapsulate all of the wounds that we have helped to create. We see in them all of the patterns of dysfunctional behaviour that we have contributed to by active and passive means. It is because of our own complicity in creating the scapegoats why it is necessary that we face up to the reality and express our sorrow and seek forgiveness.

When one looks into the future of this nation it becomes very difficult to see hope if it does not involve forgiveness and reconciliation between our hostile communities. There must be an intentional will to accept and embrace 'the other' that we love to hate as neighbours that we need in order to live in peace. Nothing less than a psychotherapeutic process that includes individuals and communities owning up to past atrocities will allow hurting persons to journey towards what legal scholar Martha Minow describes as remembering and forgetting, judging and forgiving, reconciling and avenging.

It is good to see and hear how the crisis that we are facing has brought different groups together to work for peace. We in the Church acknowledge that in Christ there is power that is available to break the cycle of violence and set people free.

However if we are to be used by Christ, we must face up to the sins of division in our own community. We have garrison church communities that domesticate God and use verbal weapons to demonise other churches so as to prevent their members from appreciating God at work in other communities.

Their teachings that the whole truth of the gospel is to be found only in their cultic communities and nowhere else says more about the immaturity of their spiritual development rather than a desire to protect members.

We therefore need to acknowledge and repent of our churches' share in responsibility for the different forms of violence that have enveloped our land and has contributed to the death of so many. For Emancipation and Independence 2001 the Jamaican Church should rise to the challenge of committing its membership to an ongoing process of peace building by eschewing ways in which we consume and support violence, individually and communally.

The time has come also for the Theological College and the Faculty of Theology at the University of the West Indies to develop a contextual curriculum on Peace Studies to equip our leaders.

The way forward calls for a strong collaborative effort between churches, the police and community organisations to build positive alternatives to the growing culture of violence. It is for this reason that I salute the different networking of organisations that are seeking to work for peace building. However, I must make a plea that we must be careful with what appears to be forming new groups to address old wrongs. This love of forming new groupings can be interpreted as creating new instruments of division within the society.

Whatever are the objectives of these new groups the number one priority should be working to identify the root causes of violence in our nation and work in partnership with other people of goodwill to develop mechanisms and programmes to overcome this evil.

I would like to call upon all members of the clergy from every church in the land to take a stand against violence by refusing to offer character references to citizens who wish to acquire gun licences from the Police. Our society is being held to ransom by the demonic forces of drugs, guns and corruption. We should not become partners with the spread of weapons of death in the society. This simple step may help to prevent one more death.

We invite all Christians to join in the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting and charitable giving as we put up resistance against the demonic forces of suffering, evil and death in our nation.

For Emancipation and Independence 2001 I pledge my support and that of the community for which I give servant-leadership, to address the causes and consequences of violence and work in partnership with others for peace and reconciliation in Jamaica.

I am, etc.,

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