THE EDITOR, Sir:
THIS IS an open letter to Amnesty International. I am responding to your article that appeared in The Sunday Gleaner on January 19, 2003. Firstly, I am happy that you appeared sympathetic with our suffering directly and indirectly as victims of horrific crimes. But, I assure you, that you could not begin to understand anything we feel.
Your thinking on the matter is quite linear and simple-minded, I don't even know from what local studies you are drawing your conclusions and within what context, that resuming hanging here would not act as a deterrent to some of the perpetrators of these barbaric acts against the Jamaican society.
You might have read our local newspapers, watched some one-sided BBC documentary on Jamaica showing some staged and ridiculous scenes, but, have you ever sat with men who murder with little or no remorse. Men and boys who have killed, raped, and injured young men and women, children and old people and rejoice about it do you know what they speak about, the life they live, the things they enjoy largely due to their crimes. Have you ever stared into their eyes, listened to their tales of barbarism and criminality?
I guess not. For your information, none of them wants to die. They act like they have nothing to live for but that is just to spook the majority of us Jamaicans in thinking that they are so hollow.
They cry and whimper in the same way many of their victims cry and plead for their lives when faced with death. Will it act as a deterrent to some of the crimes we are seeing in the context of the Jamaican situation? Yes!
Your article is an affront to me and our democracy. Why do you think we do not know what we are about, if the majority of this country's citizens want hanging to resume who are you to claim we are looking for quick fixes. I thought this was what democracy is about.
Our inner cities are being inundated with cocaine, crack, guns and bullets. Huge quantities of cocaine for organised groups are passing through this country, destabilising our economy, enslaving our people, attacking our social cohesiveness, causing indescribable pain to our citizens, destroying our image and credibility as a country. Do not tell us about quick and symbolic fixes, do not tell us about the cycle of brutality, do not tell us about getting even; maybe you should direct these words to your own Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and US President George Bush.
I am, etc.,
FITZROY GREGORY
kidwani@yahoo.com
PO Box 180
Kingston 5
Via Go-Jamaica
