Stephen Vasciannie, Contributor
IN RECENT weeks, a fair degree of attention was turned to the question of human rights in Jamaica.
In recognition of International Human Rights Day , the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) hosted a roundtable on human rights in Jamaica, which saw presentations from the Chief Justice of the Cayman Islands, the Jamaican Minister of National Security, Dr Lloyd Barnett, Dennis Daley Q.C., and others.
Shortly thereafter, the Prime Minister indicated that the long anticipated Charter of Rights for the Jamaican Constitution would be tabled in the House of Representatives; the Attorney-General issued a broadly worded statement on the importance of human rights; and, on December 11, the draft Charter of Rights was tabled.
Against the background of these activities, it may be appropriate to reconsider, in summary form, some of the human rights issues that merit debate in Jamaica today.
This discussion is hardly meant to be extensive, for, as was evident at the UNDP roundtable, the range of human rights issues covers almost all areas of human life.
Indeed, having regard to international instruments on the subject, human rights issues stretch easily from the question of rights to the unborn, and include rights for various categories of persons, questions of discrimination, civil and political rights, economic and social rights (including the rights to health, employment and education), questions of reparations for injustice, freedom of expression, and trade union rights.
Given the wide range of issues falling within the canopy of human rights, there is often a danger that human rights discussions become somewhat unfocussed, or alternatively, that areas deserving serious attention fall by the wayside in the face of competing issues.
With these factors in mind, I wish to examine, in particular, aspects of the right to life and freedom from cruel and inhuman treatment and conditions, two rights that have unquestioned status in international law.
LEGAL SAFEGUARDS
To what extent are the aforementioned rights enjoyed today in Jamaica?
Generally, if one uses Jamaica's willingness to grant these rights to individuals through international treaties, a rather rosy picture emerges.
So, for instance, since 1975, Jamaica has been a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the ICCPR), and to the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (the ICESCR).
The country has also consistently given rhetorical support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and can be heard condemning human rights violations in international forums such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth and the Organization of American States.
Similarly, with reference to constitutional and legislative provisions, due respect is paid on paper to several human rights, as traditionally defined.
For instance, Section 14 of the Jamaican Constitution declares in part that: "No person shall intentionally be deprived of his life save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been convicted."
And, similarly, Section 17(1) of the Constitution proscribes torture, as well as inhuman or degrading punishment or other treatment.
But pause for a moment. Who could realistically argue that the right to life is respected in Jamaica today?
In 2000, no less than 887 persons were murdered, and, for 2001, the figure is in excess of 1,000.
Nor are these figures exceptional. For the five-year period between 1996 and 2000, an average of 930 murders were reported to the police, and, since 1991, the murder level has risen almost inexorably from 561 per annum to the present range between 850 and 1,100.
At the same time, the rate at which the police have been able to clear up these murders leaves much to be desired. In 2000, 53.8 per cent of murders reported were resolved by the police, while the average rate of clearing up for the five-year period between 1996 and 2000 is approximately 47 per cent.
Statistically as well, there is an overwhelming case for the view that some members of the country's police force treat the right to life with scant respect.
This is borne out in the table (see above), which sets out the number of police killings for the period from 1996 to 2000, as well as the number of police killed.
In the five-year period from 1996 to 2000, the Jamaican police killed 733 people, and 56 members of the police force lost their lives to murderers; or, in short, 13 civilians were killed for each member of the police force.
These statistics help to explain why many people react with serious disbelief almost whenever the police claim that they have had to kill suspects in the exercise of self-defence.
More fundamentally, with a ratio of 13 civilian deaths per police death, the figures suggest that, despite protestations to the contrary, there is a prevailing, and dominant, sentiment among many policemen that poor Jamaicans simply have no right to life.
PRISON BRUTALITY
The gap between Jamaica's international posturing on human rights and the realities on the ground is also starkly evident in matters concerning the treatment of individuals in the country's lock-ups, remand centres and penal institutions.
When Agana Barrett and two other men died in the Constant Spring lock-up in October 1992, 18 grown men had been placed in a poorly ventilated cell with dimensions 8 feet by 7 feet.
One man drank his own urine in an attempt to quench his thirst, and another screamed that he would pay US$20 for a spoonful of water.
Meanwhile, police officers callously played dominoes outside the cell doors. More generally, we cannot expect freedom from cruel and inhuman conditions when overcrowding in the nation's prisons remains firmly entrenched.
In a "good" year at the St. Catherine District Prison, for instance, the ratio of inmates to the rated capacity of the prison is approximately 2 to 1, while the Tower Street facility is little better.
And, sadly, this is not news. In 1993, the Wolfe Committee wrote that "the conditions which exist in our prisons make them a seething cauldron, the explosion of which is imminent", while two years later, Gerald Kaufman, then an opposition politician in Britain, noted in the House of Commons that "death row (in Jamaica) is one of the most abominable places that I have visited in my life."
Persons conducting Commissions of Enquiry into prison disturbances throughout the decade of the 1990s have all searched for words to describe the backward, brutal and bitter conditions in our prisons, but their pleas have not resulted in any substantial improvement of the situation.
SOCIAL ATTITUDES
Why, then, has Jamaica fallen so far short of recognising its basic obligations concerning the right to life and freedom from cruel and inhuman conditions?
Naturally, the answer to this question turns on a number of interrelated social and political considerations, but, ultimately, I believe, there is a problem of social attitudes.
Many of us - perhaps the majority - take the view that extrajudicial killings and brutal prison conditions are somehow necessary components of the fight against criminals in society.
So, for many, there is no sense of moral outrage that the police have killed 773 persons since 1996.
Not all of these killings could have been undertaken in self-defence, but, as a society, we look the other way, armed with the belief that these killings will help to break the cycle of violence.
But surely, they will not: instead, they will help to feed the perception that the state is guilty of violent transgressions against basic human rights, and will cause many Jamaicans to seek forms of survival outside the purview of the state. Moreover, the situation remains frightening because the state itself seems so willing to find spurious excuses to justify its actions that impinge upon human rights.
The financial constraints faced by the Jamaican state is sometimes mentioned as a means of justifying poor prison conditions; but, clearly, if the continuing FINSAC debate tells us anything, it is that budgeting arrangements reflect state priorities.
If the Government wished to find money to improve prisons and lock-ups across the country, and to construct new facilities, it could have done so long, long time. But little or nothing is done because social outrage remains tempered by the view that criminals are deserving of nothing but death and callous disregard. Sometimes, too, the state seeks to justify human rights violations by reference to the need for order in society.
Just last week, Minister Phillips argued, for instance, that the provision of order by the state is, logically and historically, a condition precedent for respect for human rights. This pronouncement is far too broad to make much sense.
Of course, the maintenance of order is important, but the Minister needs to say which human rights may have to be taken away to secure order.
And, most importantly, there are some human rights, such as the right to life, that must be respected in all circumstances.
STATE AS AN OBSTACLE
If, in the early days of his tenure as Minister of National Security, Dr. Phillips is reaching for a doctrine of order, he should spell out more precisely what he has in mind. All too often police killings in the name of order simply increase the number of murders and undermine the very law and order that the Minister wishes to preserve.
Finally, if progress is to be made, the state must acknowledge that it is the greatest obstacle to the promotion and protection of human rights in Jamaica today.
Among other things, the state must frankly and consistently admit that its agents indulge far too often in extra-judicial killings, and it must take steps immediately to improve conditions in our prisons and lock-ups.
As the Public Defender has argued, all members of the police force should be retrained with an emphasis on human rights, and the Police Public Complaints Authority should be given a staff complement of at least 30 persons to facilitate rigorous and independent investigations of police killings. The state should also initiate a programme of education, beginning in schools, on the nature of human rights, and on the rights we all possess. The time for action has long passed into history.
Stephen Vasciannie, a UWI lecturer, is currently a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge University, in Britain.
