Dead men tell no tales - BBC releases film on police killings here

Glenda Anderson, staff reporter

Dead Men Tell No Tales, is a grip-ping 45-minute BBC documentary which highlights widespread incidencies of extrajudicial police killings in Jamaica and a tottering judicial system.

The film is set for immediate release on the international network; CVM Tevision will air it tomorrow at 9:00 p.m.

Dead Men Tell No Tales features eyewitness accounts of police tortures and killings, particularly the controversial cases of the Braeton incident in which seven young men were killed in St. Catherine, Michael Gayle in Grants Pen and Janice Allen in Trench Town in Kingston.

The documentary outlines a tale of a country in terror and injustice at the hands of a police force which is called the deadliest in the world.

"In April this year, 13-year-old Janice Allen was shot dead in the back as she went out to buy a bag of rice, near her home in Trench Town. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but she was just one of an average of 140 people killed by police every year in Jamaica, which has the worst record of police killings in the world.

"The majority of the people do not have access to justice or the social and economic or educational benefits," says narrator BBC reporter Janine Di Giovanni.

The film describes the local situation as a "virtual state of emergency" and calls upon the accounts of major players like Carolyn Gomes and Yvonne Sobers, human rights activists with the local group, "Jamaicans for Justice", who repeated calls for transparency.

"Our police force has been killing on average of a hundred and fifty of our citizens for the last eight years. Its an emergency...its an emergency if one more dies," Gomes said.

Other persons interviewed were Commissioner of Police, Francis Forbes, Crime Unit Head, Reneto Adams, Minister of National Security and Justice K.D. Knight and Dr. Peter Leth, independent pathologist with international human rights group, Amnesty International.

The report traces the beginning of the situation to early political tensions stating "The roots of the current violence can be traced back to the early 70s in the shadow of the Cold War as Jamaica was pulled apart by pro- and anti-western political factions. Eminent politicians began the dangerous process of polarisation."

It refers to comments by Bruce Golding, "The guns were introduced as a part of the political weaponry and gangs were armed to defend territory, to deprive competing political forces of the opportunity to campaign."

The film also examines the official autopsy reports of the Braeton incident with major refutations by independent pathologist, Dr. Peter Leth.

Dead Men Tell No Tales is narrated by BBC reporter Janine Di Giovanni and produced by Ewa Ewart - BBC TV correspondent.

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