Martin Henry "NO POLICE! No media! Yuh zi mi?" This was the word from the Mountain View Avenue dons/community leaders as the Bishop went in where angels fear to tread.
And Her Majesty's loyal Constabulary (the crown is still on the badge), pledged to uphold the laws of the state, took contrary orders and back wey. The media, in the words of one senior media person, "held their ground" and went in without the protection of law enforcement officers who remained confined to the periphery by the orders of community leadership.
In the latest round of political violence in communities around lower Mountain View Avenue at least 10 people have been killed the aged, the mentally handicapped, innocent non-combatants murdered in cold blood in their homes as easy targets in ruthless and vicious revenge killings.
POLITICAL VIOLENCE
It is political violence at several levels. The Prime Minister promised his granddaughter, in the safety of uptown and state security, to honour the symbolism attached by her to his celebrated initials: P.J. means Protect Jamaica. P.J. has sought to distance politics from the chronic violence and crime which in the current time plague the country he rules and particularly its capital city and its garrison communities most of which are controlled by P.J.'s People's National Party. Political violence is a thing of the past, we are assured. Mountain View Avenue is testimony to the failure of fact in this view.
The battle lines are drawn between politically opposing communities which have been fighting and killing each other and making peace before the present warriors were born. The current round of fighting flared up in the heat of the Local Government Election campaign. But most tellingly, political leadership are occupying a central role in the peace-making process. Henry-Wilson and Henriques march together, not to any mountain top but into the quagmire of politically tribal violence a generation old. Political leaders do not, as a rule, intervene in non-political crimes and seldom outside the garrisons.
Bishop Herro Blair leads the Peace Management Initiative to negotiate peace. Who will speak for the murdered and those made refugees? Where is justice for the slain and dispossessed? Surely these questions should trouble a Christian clergyman, if not political leaders.
We have a long history of making so-called peace by suspending the claims of the law and of justice. Hot beers with a Prime Minister in Rema after the fact of multiple murders. Truces and marches and negotiations - and no lasting peace in one single zone of conflict so engaged. Fresh spasms of bloodletting convulse these zones of death, in an endless cycle, as old scores are settled. "Justice is turned back/And righteousness stands afar off/For Truth is fallen in the street/And equity cannot enter", the prophet Isaiah thunders in the ears of the Bishop. (ch. 59:14).
No police. Let us suspend the law in the interest of peace. No media. Let us suspend transparency and truth in the interest of peace. Those who have no influence over arms and warriors are in no position whatsoever to negotiate peace from the positions of the combatants.
The concession of the sovereign authority of the Jamaican state to community leadership with the authority to make peace is as amazing as it is traitorous. Its endorsement by the church through the bishop is even more so. The blood of the slain cries out from the ground and is gumming up all peace initiatives without law, equity and justice.
The Back Bush residents who chanted, "We no want no peace, oonu go wey," may be wiser and more honest than the bringers of a false peace. They, as a mini-state within the state, are perhaps well aware of what astute nations have always known that in a hostile and dangerous world, peace and security are best found in strength and arms and perpetual readiness.
The abandonment of entire communities to dons and criminals by the Jamaican state, which has asked us to lay down arms for self-defence and to entrust our security to its security agencies, is nothing short of alarming and treasonable. Unilateral disarmament by any community facing a deadly foe a street away or across the gully is a stupid one-way ticket to the cemetery to which thousands of Jamaicans have already been carted as the unrequited victims of violence rooted in political tribalism. The good Bishop should use his good office in the PMI to get the guns to the table. The police, from all appearances, cannot retrieve them, and they are now under new command for non-engagement in the peace process.
As a PMI peace walk proceeded, according to The Gleaner "Phillip Henriques, the Jamaica Labour Party caretaker for St. Andrew South East, was in deep conversation with a group of men in the Back Bush community, when several shots rang out." The people have spoken. " 'We (who?) are going to deal with this (how?)," Mr. Henriques is reported to have assured the opposing frightened factions from Jarret Lane, "because it is total disrespect (to whom?)'"
NO REAL PEACE
In the absence of the protection of the state and the presence of old scores to settle, in the absence of the rule of law and the presence of the means of settling those scores on a private basis there can be no real peace. The leaders are "saying, 'Peace, peace'/When there is no peace," Jeremiah cried (ch 6:14). The poignant hope of the resident whose published poster read, "Can we make this a final peace call?" will unfortunately be dashed. Before the ink had dried "Shooting shatters peace", the headline shouted.
In civilised states and in international law, murder victims are in a different category from the casualties of war. Despite the bogus rhetoric of war and peace, it is crime most foul with which we are confronted. The dead of Mountain View Avenue are not casualties of combat; they are the victims of murder. Their murderers are at large. Pretentious peace must not remove justice from their case. There can be no peace without justice and without the rule of law within the state.
Martin Henry is a communication consultant.
