By Don Robotham, Contributor
Police trying to maintain peace in a section of the volatile Duhaney Park community. - Norman Grindley/Staff Photographer
JAMAICA IS playing with fire on the crime issue. Just when one thought that the drug murderers amongst us could sink no lower, they have given us an unpleasant surprise.
The recent murder of a seven-year-old child in North London in connection with a drug reprisal 'hit', should make it absolutely clear what we are dealing with. We are faced with ruthless gangsterism which will stop at nothing and which is international in its scope.
This unforgivable crime also brings out another feature of the Jamaican public attitudes on the crime issue. Reports in the press quote some as blaming child care authorities in Birmingham. The mother herself is quoted as remarking on the loving nature of the criminal father.
The grandfather is quoted as observing that the dead man was "an easy-going fellow, easy to get on with" and that he (the dead child's grandfather) "grew up all my kids with principle."
In other words, in true Jamaican fashion, a seven-year-old child has been murdered and nobody takes responsibility. If you want to understand our wishy-washy approach to curbing crime in Jamaica, you have to understand this our natural, home-grown moral, social and political evasiveness. Jamaican anancyism in all its vile glory!
This tolerance for illegality inside all of us eats away at our will to act firmly. We must ruthlessly cut through this moral morass if we are to tackle criminality decisively and with a sustained effort.
This is what Justice Kay Beckford denounced in her trenchant statement at the recent opening of the Home Circuit Court. It is no use blaming this or that group the foreign press for example. Yes, they have flocked to Jamaica and yes, they will write shallow and sensational stories about the 'inept' Jamaican government and their 'brutal' police, in contrast to the 'ept' UK government and their angelic police.
Beating up on black third world countries has become a journalistic spectator sport in developed countries, guaranteed to advance careers back home. From their viewpoint, the Byfield case is a godsend: opportunists will seize opportunities.
The real issue, however, is not the shallow one of adverse publicity. The real issue is that we have a violent crime situation, deeply embedded in international drug running and all we do is shilly-shally. We will not take the firm steps needed to deal with this crisis.
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
By now we should understand that our problem is not simply one of extortionists creating mayhem in Spanish Town and Montego Bay. Nor is it a matter only of political violence. It is the interlocking of all these with international drug criminality which is the problem to be tackled. In the dangerous international security climate which exists in the world today this poses a very serious threat. A large pool of out-of-control armed and ruthless international criminals constitutes a sea in which other, much bigger fish, may swim.
What then? It won't be a matter of the murder of a Jamaican child in London in a drug reprisal case. It won't be simply a matter of adverse publicity. On the contrary it will be a matter of an international threat, especially to the security of the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
We are living in a dream world if we imagine that these countries, or any country with the means to act, will simply stand idly by while Minister Phillips and the Jamaican people play the fool on vital matters of security. They will act, and rightly so, to protect their own national security interests, legalistic niceties notwithstanding.
This is the kind of fire Jamaica is playing with. Instead of acting firmly to establish a stringent legal regime which aggressively removes ruthless criminals from society, we give indignant
speeches calling for civic support, or empty-headed lectures about the long-term causes of crime, or we moralise endlessly as is our wont.
We know that economic failure and social inequalities are the root cause of criminality. We know that we live in an unfair and cruel world in which there is no free lunch for anybody, least of all developing countries. We know that there is a value crisis in Jamaica, as elsewhere in the world. We know that if we had the resources to 'create' (how create?) thousands of jobs we would not have this crisis in the first place. We all know that Jamaica is not the only country facing such a crisis and that it will take many years, indeed decades, to address these longer term issues. None of this is exactly news. But what we want, Minister Phillips, is not cliché. We need results and we need them now!
CIVIL SOCIETY ACTION
Time is running out on this issue. It has run out for Minister Phillips. It is running out for Jamaica as a whole.
Idle chatter at party conferences, press conferences, news releases and phone-ins cannot help us now.
I am tired of pointing out that if we act firmly now, we can do so within the framework of the rule of law with minimum damage to the human and constitutional rights of the law abiding majority in the society. Honesty compels us to agree that there will be some damage. But we can minimise it if we think it through and consult broadly. However, the longer we wait, the more the situation spirals out of control. As this happens, it then becomes impossible to retrieve it without the most extreme measures. We will be in a Colombia-type situation. Do we want to go down that road of no return? That is the slippery slope on which we have been put by our prevarication and lack of will to act.
This can no longer be tolerated. The civil society leadership of Jamaica has a duty to act in the firmest possible manner and to act now. I am confident that a majority of well-thinking Jamaicans, if given the leadership, will support them. I am confident that a serious effort in this direction has the potential to garner powerful international support. We must wait no longer on Phillips or the Opposition to act. As was the case with the general elections, we must seize the initiative ourselves. Maximum national and international pressure is urgently required.
HUMAN RIGHTS
One of the preliminaries for civil society leadership to act with decisiveness, is dialogue with the human rights groups. Unrewarding as this may be, they must patiently explain to these groups the precarious situation in which the society has placed itself. They must explain their intent to find a way to act firmly but within the framework of the rule of law.
They must sincerely invite the human rights group to come off the sidelines where they self-righteously sit and help the society work out an acceptable and legal solution to this extremely grave and complex problem.
They must challenge the popular and very characteristic Jamaican notion that 'man free' that individual human rights can be exercised and sustained anarchistically, without obligation to society and due regard for the sovereignty of the state.
Many of these activists are smug dogmatists who are beyond reason. Such persons harbour the illusion that the difficult problems of reconciling individual rights with the sovereignty of the state in extremist which have preoccupied legions of philosophers and jurists at least from Montesquieu on, are easily resolved. All one needs is a press release from Amnesty International swiftly posted on their web site. As straightforward as anatomy!
But not all human rights advocates hold to such naive absurdities. Even if they do not agree, the entire society will see that a sincere effort was made and that advocates of strong measures take legality and rights seriously, perhaps more seriously than the human rights dogmatists are capable of understanding!
The point is: no more words. The leadership of civil society must act decisively and act now!
Don Robotham is an anthropologist who specialises in development issues in the Caribbean and West Africa.
