Peter EspeutLAST SUNDAY on my way to lead worship in Guy's Hill, St. Catherine, I passed a group of men setting up a roadblock on the Linstead bypass to protest the shooting by the police of a man in Bog Walk going about his private business. So far nothing new; Jamaica has the highest rate of police killings in the world, and who can count the number of roadblocks to protest police shootings over the last decade? They are now a regular fixture on the Jamaican cultural scene like ackee and saltfish for breakfast. Like the regular standard police press release that the man opened fire on the police and the police returned the fire, and a search of the area resulted in the discovery of the body of a man suffering from gunshot wounds, who was later pronounced dead at hospital.
And then the Member of Parliament for the area (an eminent lawyer), announces that the evidence which has come to him indicates that the Bog Walk man was murdered by the police. What is new and stunning is that the MP accusing the police of murder is none other than K.D. Knight, Minister of National Security and Justice for most of the last decade, who was deafeningly silent when police bullets were fired into taxicabs and minibuses and crowds (caught on television on more than one occasion) and various other places to earn for Jamaica its scandalous world record. Not to mention his silence when mentally-ill Mi-chael Gayle was beaten to death because he rode his bicycle into a police-military roadblock.
Later, his condemnation seemed to soften as he suggested that the killing was a case of mistaken identity. The police were looking for someone else. In other words, the law officers of the state had executed the wrong man! The days of the right man are numbered!
I wonder whether the policemen who were in Bog Walk last Saturday night were in the pay of Amnesty International? To mark the second anniversary of the Braeton massacre, officials from Amnesty headquarters in London were in Jamaica to release a report accusing the Jamaican police of extrajudicial killings (a nice way of saying that they murder people). Which report the Government including Minister Knight vigorously and vehemently rejected as nonsense and suspect, accusing Amnesty of mounting an international campaign against Jamaica. The Government's response was predictable. And then the police kill this man in Bog Walk on the very day after the Braeton anniversary! Clearly the police are not intimidated either by Amnesty International or by we bleeding-heart human rights advocates! The message is that extrajudicial killings by the police will continue.
DID IT HAVE TO COME TO THIS?
For me, the Braeton massacre was a turning point. At the time I was assigned to the Braeton Roman Catholic Church, and I assisted at the funerals of three of the Braeton seven: Reagon O'Brian Beckford, André St. Christopher Virgo and Christopher Glenant Grant. I had never met any of them in life, but they had friends and family who wanted a decent burial for them. As I looked at their battered and bruised faces unsuccessfully covered up by the funeral parlour, and at the tam and dark glasses which partially covered the damaged head of Chris, I asked myself why it had to come to this. I don't know if they were criminals and murderers; only a court should decide that; but they were my brothers - washed in the same waters of baptism as I am, citizens of the same country as I am, and members of the same human race as I am. Did that not qualify them for a chance to speak for themselves, to plead guilt or innocence, to work out their salvation in fear and trembling?
Apparently not! What has provoked the ire of Amnesty International and other well-thinking people is that all too often, Jamaican police act as judge, jury and executioner with the active complicity of the Government. The callous silence of Minister K.D. Knight in the face of the thousands (yes, thousands) of police killings on his watch, speaks volumes. In any decent society (and, sad to say, Jamaica does not yet number among these) persons suspected of crimes are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. In Jamaica, too many persons suspected of crimes are executed by the police without their cases going to trial to determine guilt or innocence.
With the replacement of Minister Knight by Peter Phillips, I had expected something different, but I was mistaken. There was no public statement that on his watch the human rights of Jamaicans would be respected, no injunction to the police to act within the law. The killings by the police in questionable circumstances continue.
I remain surprised that so many so-called good Christian people in Jamaica condone police executions. It is clear that there are many within our churches whose hearts are in need of conversion to the message of Jesus.
I am proud to be a member of Amnesty International. Good work, guys! Continue your campaign to make Jamaica a decent place for us to live. Keep it up until (to quote our National Anthem) justice and truth are ours.
The Rev. Peter Espeut is a sociologist and an ordained deacon of the Roman Catholic Church.
