THE EDITOR, Sir:
THIS IS an open letter to the American Ambassador to Jamaica, Her Excellency Sue McCourt Cobb.
Your Excellency,
We wish, through you, to convey to the people of America the pain and anguish we share with them for the three weeks of sheer terror they underwent at the hands of vicious cowards, and our pain was intensified by the news that numbered among the victims was one of our own.
The joy and relief which accompanied the news that suspects had been held, quickly turned to numbness for all Jamaicans, at home and abroad, when it was revealed that one of the two held was Jamaican.
The instinctive and understandable reaction of some Americans was to instantly regard Jamaicans everywhere as pariahs and for them to be treated accordingly. I was in America when the news broke, and the first evidence I had of this treatment was the exhaustive screening process I, as well as all Air Jamaica passengers were subjected to on leaving the country I can only imagine the fate of my countrymen, entering.
Madame Ambassador, I invite yourself and all America to examine the Jamaican balance sheet. On the debit side yes! we have the Jamaican posses and, if convicted, a John Lee Malvo. But let's look at our credit side we have given to America the following:
to the Military Service General Colin Powell; to the NBA, Patrick Ewing and Rumeal Robinson; to the WNBA, Simone Edwards; to baseball, Charlie 'Chili' Davis and Devon White; to the NFL, Sean Jones; to track and field, Sandra Farmer-Patrick and Inger Miller; to England, Lennox Lewis; to Canada, Donovan Bailey; to horseracing, Ralph Zaidie and George Hosang; to ice hockey, Mark Townshend; to the world of winter sports, the Jamaica Bob Sled team; to the world of soccer, the Reggae Boyz; and to the entire world, Bob Marley and our music; and the list could go on not to mention Claude McKay, poet, and Louis Simpson, Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry.
And as employers across America will verify, the thousands of competent and industrious employees in the field of industry, commerce, technology, university professors, the medical, dental, legal, teaching and nursing professions as well as farms and hotels all across America.
At the conclusion of a full and fair trial, if John Lee Malvo is convicted of capital murder, he will become associated with one of the darker pages of American criminal history a course of conduct which is unforgivable; but, if all Jamaicans were to be condemned in the eyes of Americans everywhere as a result, that would be equally unforgivable.
I implore you, Madame Ambassador, to entreat your countrymen, especially the media, not to take that road. All nations possess their deranged and aberrant fringe elements and Jamaica is no exception, but like everywhere else they represent a minority percentage of the population. The vast majority of the population do not deserve, therefore, to be judged by the conduct of the few.
I am, etc.,
HOWARD HAMILTON, Q.C.
Public Defender
72 Harbour Street
Kingston
